'U- 



') . 




Qass. 
Book- 



IthO 



THE 



PRINCIPLES 



OF 



MOEAL AND POLITICAL 
PHILOSOPHY. 

BY WILLIAM PALEY, D.D. 

dlompietc in ®ne bolnme. 

WITH QUESTIONS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF STUDENTa 



N E W YORK: 
HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

329 & 331 PEARL STREET, 
FRANKLIN SQVARE. 

1860. 



ot> 






\<^ 



qP 



SOURCE U.uvNOWN 
MAY 2 8 1S25 



TO THE 



RIGHT HEV. EMUND LAW, D.D., 



LORD BISHOP OF CARLISLE. 



My Lord, 
Had the obligations which I owe to your lordship's kindness been 
much less or much fewer than they are ; had personal gratitude left any 
place in my mind for deliberation or for inquiry, in selecting a name 
which every reader might confess to be prefixed with propriety to a 
work that, in many of its parts, bears no obscure relation to the gener- 
al principles of natural and revealed religion, I should have found my- 
self directed by many considerations to that of the Bishop of Carlisle. 
A long life spent in the most interesting of all human pursuits — the in- 
vestigation of moral and religious truth, in constant and unwearied en- 
deavours to advance the discovery, communication, and success of 
both ; a life so occupied, and arrived at that period which renders every 
life venerable, commands respect by a title which no virtuous mind 
will dispute ; which no mind, sensible of the importance of these studies 
to the supreme concernments of mankind, will not rejoice to see ac- 
knowledged. Whatever difference or whatever opposition some who 
peruse your lordship's writings may perceive between your conclusions 
and their own, the good and wise of all persuasions will revere that 
industry which has for its object the illustration or defence of our com- 
mon Christianity. Your lordship's researches have never lost sight of 
one purpose, namely, to recover the simplicity of the Gospel from be- 
neath that load of unauthorized additions which the ignorance of some 
ages and the learning of others, the superstition of weak and the craft 
of designing men, have (unhappily for its interest) heaped upon it. And 
this purpose, I am convinced, was dictated by the purest motive ; by a 
firm, and, I think, a just opinion, that whatever renders religion more 
rational renders it more credible ; that he who, by a diligent and faith- 
ful examination of the original records, dismisses from the system one 
article which contradicts the apprehension, the experience, or the rea- 
soning of mankind, does more toward recommending the belief, and, 
with the belief, the influence of Christianity, to the understandings and 
consciences of serious inquirers, and through them to universal recep- 
tion and authority, than can be effected by a thousand contenders for 
creeds and ordinances of human establishment. 

When the doctrine of Transubstantiation had taken possession of the 
Christian world, it was not without the industry of learned men that it 
came at length to be discovered that no such doctrine was contained 
in the New Testament. But had those excellent persons done nothing 

A 



U DEDICATION. 

more by their discovery than abolished an innocent superstition, or 
changed some directions in the ceremonial of public worship, they had 
merited little of that veneration with which the gratitude of Protestant 
churches remembers their services. What they did for mankind was 
this : they exonerated Christianity of a weight which sunk it. If in- 
dolence or timidity had checked these exertions, or suppressed the fruit 
and publication of these inquiries, is it too much to affirm that infidel- 
ity would at this day have been universal^ 

I do not mean, my lord, by the mention of this example, to insinuate 
that any popular opinion which your lordship may have encountered 
ought to be compared with Transubstantiation, or that the assurance 
with which we reject that extravagant absurdity is attainable in the 
controversies in which your lordship has been engaged ; but I mean, 
by calling to mind those great reformers of the public faith, to observe, 
or rather to express my own persuasion, that to restore the purity is 
most effectually to promote the progress of Christianity ; and that the 
same virtuous motive which hath sanctified their labours, suggested 
yours. At a time when some men appear not to perceive any good, 
and others to suspect an evil tendency, in that spirit of examination and 
research which is gone forth in Christian countries, this testimony is 
become due, not only to the probity of your lordship's views, but to the 
general cause of intellectual and religious liberty. 

That your lordship's life may be prolonged in health and honour , 
that it may continue to afford an instructive proof how serene and easy 
old age can be made by the memory of important and well-intended la- 
bours, by the possession of public and deserved esteem, by the presence 
of many grateful relatives ; above all, by the resources of religion, by 
an unshaken confidence in the designs of a "faithful Creator," and a 
settled trust in the truth and in the promises of Christianity, is the fer- 
vent prayer of, 

^ My lord, 

Your lordship's dutiful, 
Most obliged, 

And most devoted servant, 
WILLIAM PALEY. 

Carlisle, February 10th, 1785. 



PREFACE 



In the treatises that I have met with upon the subject of morals^ l ap- 
pear 10 myself to have remarked the following imperfections : — either that 
the principle was erroneous, or that it was indistinctly explained, or that 
the rules deduced from it, were not sufficiently adapted to real life and to 
actual situations. The writings of Grotius, and the larger work of Puffen- 
dorff, are of ioo forensic a cast, too much mixed up with the civil law and 
with the jurisprudence of Germany, to answer precisely the design of a 
system of ethics, — the direction of private consciences in the gfeneral con- 
duct of human life. Perhaps, indeed, they are not to be regarded as in- 
stitutes of morality calculated to instruct an individual in his duty, so much 
as a species of law books and law authorities, suited to the practice of those 
courts of justice, whose decisions are regulated by general principles of 
natural equity, in conjunction with the maxims of the Roman code ; of 
which kind, I understand, there are many upon the Continent. To which 
may be added, concerning both these authors, that they are more occupied 
in describing the rights and usages of independent communities than is ne- 
cessary in a work which professes not to adjust the correspondence of na- 
tions, but to delineate the offices of domestic life. The profusion also of 
classical quotations with which many of their pages abound, seems to me 
a fault from which it will not be easy to excuse them. If these extracts 
be intended as decorations of style, the composition is overloaded with or- 
naments of one kind. To any thing more than ornament they can make 
no claim. To propose them as serious arguments, gravely to attempt to 
establish or fortify a moral duty by the testimony of a Greek or Roman 
poet, is to trifle with the attention of the reader, or rather to take it off 
from all just principles of reasoning in morals. 

Of our own writers in this branch of philosophy, I find none that I think 
perfectly free from the three objections which I have stated. There is 
likewise a fourth property observable almost in all of them, namely, that 
they divide too much the law of Nature from the precepts of Revelation ; 
some authors industriously declining the mention of Scripture authorities, 
as belonging to a different province ; and others reserving them for a sepa- 
rate volume : which appears to me much the same defect, as if a commen- 
tator on the laws of England shouldcontent himself with stating upon each 
head the common law of the land, without taking any notice of acts of Par- 
liament ; or should choose to give his readers the common law in one book, 
and the statute law in another. "When the obligations of morality are 
taught," says a pious and celebrated writer, " let the sanctions of Christi- 
anity never be forgotten : by which it will be shown that they give strengtl?. 
and lustre to each other : religion will appear to be the voice of reason, 
and morality will be the will of God."* 

The manner also which modern writers have treated of subjects of mo 

♦ Preface to " The Preceptor," by Dr. Johnson 



rality, is, in my judgment, liable to much exception. It has become of 
late a fashion to deliver moral institutes in strings or series of detached pro- 
positions, without subjoining a continued argument or regular dissertation 
to any of them. This sententious apophthegmatizing style, by crowding 
propositions and paragraphs too fast upon the mind, and by carrying the 
eye of the reader from subject to subject in too quick a succession, gains 
not a sufficient hold upon the attention, to leave either the memory fur- 
nished or the understanding satisfied. However useful a syllabus of top- 
ics or a series of propositions may be in the hands of a lecturer, or as a 
guide to a student, who is supposed to consult other books, or to institute 
upon each subject researches of his own, the method is by no means con- 
venient for ordinary readers ; because few readers are such thinkers as to 
want only a hint to set their thoughts at work upon ; or such as will pause 
and tarry at every proposition, till they have traced out its dependency, 
proof, relation, and consequences, before they permit themselves to step 
on to another. A respectable writer of this class* has comprised his doc- 
trine of slavery in the three following propositions : — 

" No one is born a slave ; because every one is born with all his origi- 
nal rights. 

** No one can become a slave ; because no one from being a person can, 
in the language of the Roman law, become a thing, or subject of property. 

** The supposed property of the master in the slave, therefore, is matter 
of usurpation, not of right." 

It may be possible to deduce, from these few adages, such a theory of 
the primitive rights of human nature as will evince the illegality of sla- 
very ; but surely an author requires too much of his reader, when he ex- 
pects him to make these deductions for himself ; or to supply, perhaps from 
some remote chapter of the same treatise, the several proofs and explana- 
tions which are necessary to render the meaning and truth of these asser- 
tions intelligible. 

There is a fault, the opposite of this, which some moralists who have 
adopted a different and, I think, a better plan of composition, have not al- 
ways been careful to avoid ; namely, the dwelling upon verbal and ele- 
mentary distinctions, with a labour and prolixity proportioned much more 
tc the subtlety of the question, than to its value and importance in the pro- 
secution of the subject. A writer upon the law of nature,! whose expli- 
cations in every part of philosophy, though always diffuse, are often very 
successful, has employed three long sections in endeavoring to prove thai 
** permissions are not laws." The discussion of this controversy, however 
essential it might be to dialectic precision, was certainly not necessary to 
the progress of a work designed to describe the duties and obligations of 
civil life. The reader becomes impatient when he is detained by disqui- 
sitions which have no other object than the settling of terms and phrases ; 
and what is worse, they for whose use such books are chiefly intended will 
not be persuaded to read them at all. 

I am led to propose these strictures, not by any propensity to depreciate 
the labors of my predecessors, much less to invite a comparison between 
the merits of their performances and my own ; but solely by the conside- 
ration, that when a writer offers a book to the public, upon a subject on 
which the public are already in possession of many others, he is bound by 



*Dr. Ferguson, author of ** Institutes of Moral Philosophy." 1767 
t Dr. Rutherforth, author of " Institutes of Natural Law.** 



a kind of literary justice to inform his readers, distinctly and specifically, 
what it is he professes to supply, and what he expects to improve. The 
imperfections above enumerated are those which I have endeavored to 
avoid or remedy. Of the execution the reader must judge ; but this was 
the design. 

Coiicerniiig the principle of morals it would be premature to speak: but 
concerning the manner of unfolding and explaining that principle, I have 
somewhat which I wish to be remarked. An experience of nine years in 
the office of a public tutor in one of the universities, and in that depart- 
ment of education to which these chapters relate, afforded me frequent oc- 
casion to observe that, in discoursing to young minds upon topics of mo- 
rality, it required much more pains to make them perceive the difficulty 
than to understand the solution : that, unless the subject was so drawn up 
to a point, as to exhibit the full force of an objection, or the exact place ot 
a doubt, before any explanation was entered upon, — in other words, unless 
some curiosity was excited before it was attempted to be satisfied, the la- 
bour of the teacher was lost. When information was not desired, it was 
seldom, I found, retained. I have made this observation my guide in the 
following work : that is, upon each occasion I have endeavored, before I 
suffered myself to proceed in the disquisition, to put the reader in com- 
plete possession of the question ; and to do it in the way that I thought 
most likely to stir up his own doubts and solicitude about it. 

In pursuing the principle of morals through the detail of cases to which 
it is applicable, I have had in view to accommodate both the choice of the 
subjects and the manner of handling them to the situations which arise in 
the life of an inhabitant of this country in these times. This is the thing 
that I think to be principally wanting in former treatises ; and perhaps the 
chief advantage which will be found in mine. I have examined no doubts, 
I have discussed no obscurities, I have encountered no errors, I have ad- 
verted to no controversies, but what I have seen actually to exist. If some 
of the questions treated of appear to a more instructed reader minute or 
puerile, I desire such reader to be assured, that I have found them occa- 
sions of difficulty to young minds; and what I have observed in young 
minds, I should expect to meet with in all who approach these subjects for 
the first time. Upon each article of human duty, I have combined with 
the conclusions of reason the declarations of Scripture, when they are to be 
had, as of co-ordinate authority, and as both terminating in the same sanc- 
tions. 

In the manner of the work, I have endeavored so to attemper the oppo- 
site plans above animadverted upon, as that the reader may not accuse me, 
either of too much haste or too much delay. I have bestowed upon each 
subject enough of dissertation to give a body and substance to the chapter 
in which it is treated of, as well as coherence and perspicuity : on the 
other hand, I have seldom, I hope, exercised the patience of the reader by 
the length and prolixity of my essays, or disappointed that patience at 
last by the tenuity and unimportance of the conclusion. 

There are two particulars in the following work, for which it may be 
thought necessary that I should offer some excuse. The first of which is, 
that I have scarcely ever referred to any other book ; or mentioned the 
name of the author whose thoughts, and sometimes, possibly, whose very 
expressions, I have adopted. My method of writing has constantly been 
this ; to extract what I could from my own stores and my own reflections 
in the first place ; to put down that, and afterwards to consult upon each 
subject such readings as fell in my way: which order, I am convinced, is 
the only one whereby any person can keep his thoughts from sliding into 



VI PREFACE. 

other men's trains. The effect of such a plan upon the production itself 
will be, that, whilst some parts in matter or manner may be new, others 
will be little else than a repetition of the old. T make no pretensions to 
perfect originality : I claim to be something more than a mere compiler. 
Much, no doubt, is borrowed ; but the fact is, that the notes for this work 
having been prepared for some years, and such things having been from 
time to time inserted in them as appeared to me worth preserving, and 
such insertions made commonly without the name of the author from whom 
they were taken, I should, at this time, have found a difficulty in recover- 
ing those names with sufficient exactness to be able to render to every man 
his own. Nor, to speak the truth, did it appear to me w^orth while to re- 
peat the search merely for this purpose. When authorities are relied upon, 
names must be produced ; when a discovery has been made in science, it 
may be unjust to borrow the invention without acknowledging the author. 
But in an argumentative treatise, and upon a subject which allows no place 
for discovery or invention, properly so called ; and in which all that can 
belong to a writer is his mode of reasoning or his judgment of probabilities ; 
I should have thought it superfluous, had it been easier to me than it was, 
to have interrupted my text, or crowded my margin, with references to 
every author whose sentiments I have made use of. There is, however, 
one work to which I owe so much that it would be ungrateful not to con- 
fess the obligation : I mean the writings of the late Abraham Tucker, Esq^ 
part of which were published by himself, and th^ remainder since his death, 
under the title of " The Light of Nature pursued, by Edward Search, Esq." 
I have found in this writer more original thinking and observation, upon 
the several subjects that he has taken in hand, than in any other, not to say 
than in all others put together. His talent also for illustration is unrivalled. 
But his thoughts are diffused through a long, various, and irregular work. 
I shall account it no mean praise, if I have been sometimes able to dispose 
into method, to collect into heads and articles, or to exhibit in more com- 
pact and tangible masses, what, in that otherwise excellent performance, 
is spread over too much surface. 

The next circumstance, for which some apology may be expected, is the 
joining of moral and political philosophy together, or the addition of a book 
of politics to a system of ethics. Against this objection, if it be made one, 
[ might defend myself by the example of many approved writers, who have 
treated de officiis hominis et civis, or, as some choose to express it, *« of the 
rights and obligationsof man, inhis individual and social capacity," in the 
same book. I might allege also, that the part of a member of the common- 
wealth shall take in political contentions, the vote he shall give, the coun- 
sels he shall approve, the support he shall afford, or the opposition he shall 
make, to any system of public measures — is as much a question of personal 
duty, as much concerns the conscience of the individual who deliberates, 
as the determination of any doubt which relates to the conduct of private 
life ; that consequently political philosophy is, properly speaking, a contin- 
uation of moral philosophy ; or rather indeed a part of it, supposing moral 
philosophy to have for its aim the information of the human conscience in 
every deliberation that is likely to come before it. I might avail myself of 
these excuses, if I wanted them; but the vindication upon which I rely is 
the following : In stating the principle of morals, the reader will observe 
that I have employed some industry in explaining the theory, and showing 
the necessity o( general rules ; without the full and constant consideration 
of which, I am persuaded that no system of moral philosophy can be satis- 
factory or consistent. This foundation being laid, or rather this habit be- 
ing formed, the discussion of political subjects, to which, more than to 



PREFACE. VH 

almost to any other, general rules are applicable, became clear and easy. 
Whereas had these topics been assigned to a distinct work, it would have 
been necessary to have repeated the same rudiments, to have established 
over again the same principles, as those which we have already exempli- 
fied and rendered familiar to the reader in the former parts of this. In a 
word, if there appear to any one too great a diversity, or too wide a dis- 
tance, between the subjects treated of in the course of the present volume, 
let him be reminded, that the doctrine of general rules pervades and con- 
nects the whole. 

It may not be improper, however, to admonish the reader, that, under 
the name of politics, he is not to look for those occasional controversies, 
which the occurrences of the present day, or any temporary situation of 
public affairs may excite; and most of which, if not beneath the dignity, 
it is beside the purpose of a philosophical institution to advert to. He will 
perceive, that the several disquisitions are framed with a reference to the 
condition of this country, and of this government; but it seemed to me to 
belong to the design of a work like the following, not so much to discuss 
each altercated point with the particularity of a political pamphlet upon the 
subject, as to deliver those universal principles, and to exhibit that mode 
and train of reasoning in politics, by the due application of which every 
man might be enabled to attain to just conclusions of his own. I am not 
ignorant of an objection that has been advanced against aU abstract sptL-u- 
lations concerning the origin, princii)le, or limitation of civil authority ; 
namely, that such speculations possess little or no influence upon the con- 
duct either of the state or of the subject, of the governors or the governed, 
nor are attended with any useful consequences to either ; that in times of 
tranquillity they are not wanted j in times of confusion they are never heard. 
This representation, however, in my opinion, is not just. Times of tumult, 
It is true, are not the times to learn ; but the choice which men make of 
their side and party, in the most critical occasions of the commonwealth, 
may nevertheless depend upon the lessons they have received, the books 
they have read, and the opinions they have imbibed, in seasons of leisure 
and quietness. Some judicious persons, who were present at Geneva du- 
ring the troubles which lately convulsed that city, thought they perceived, 
in the contentions there carrying on, the operation of that political theory, 
which the writings of Rousseau, and the unbounded esteem in which these 
writings are holden by his countrymen, had diffused amongst the people. 
Throughout the political disputes that have within these few years taken 
place in Great Britain, in her sister kingdom, and in her foreign dependen- 
cies, it was impossible not to observe, in the language of party, in the reso- 
lutions of public meetings, in debate, in conversation, in the general strain 
of those fugitive and diurnal addresses to the public which such occasions 
call forth, the prevalency of those ideas of civil authority which are display- 
ed in the works of Mr. Locke. The credit of that great name, the courage 
and liberality of his principles, the skill and clearness with which his argu- 
ments are proposed, no less than the weight of the arguments themselves, 
have given a reputation and currency to his opinions, of which I am per- 
suaded, in any unsettled state of public affairs, the influence w^ould be felt 
As this is not a place for examining the truth or tendency of these doc- 
trines, I would not be understood, by what I have said, to express any judg- 
ment concerning either. I mean only to remark, that such doctrines are 
not without etfect ; and that it is of practical importance to have the prin- 
ciples from which the obligations of social union, and the extent of civil 
obedience, are derived, rightly explained, and well understood. Indeed, as 
far as I have observed? in political, beyond all other subjects, where men 



Vni PREFACE. 

are without some fundamental and scientific principles to resort to, they 
are liable to have their understandings played upon by cant phrases and 
unmeaning terms, in which every party in every country possesses a voca- 
bulary. We appear astonished when we see the multitude led away by 
sounds ; but we should remember that, if sounds work miracles, it is al- 
ways upon ignorance. The influence of names is in exact proportion to 
the want of knowledge. 

These are the observations with which I have judged it expedient to pre- 
pare the attention of my reader. Concerning the personal motives which 
engaged me in the following attempt, it is not necessary that I say much : 
the nature of my academical situation, a great deal of leisure since my re- 
tirement from it, the recommendation of an honoured and excellent friend, 
the authority of the venerable prelate to whom these labours are inscribed, 
the not perceiving in what way I could employ my time or talents better, 
and my disapprobation, in literary men, of that fastidious indolence which 
sits still because it disdains to do little^ were the considerations that di- 
rected my thoughts to this design. Nor have I repented of the undertak- 
ing. Whatever be the fate or reception of this work, it owes its author 
nothing. In sickness and in health I have found in it that which can alone 
alleviate the one or give enjoyment to the other — occupation and engage- 
ment. 



CONTENTS. 



BOOK 1. 

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 
Chap. Page Chap. P«gJ 

1. DEFINITION and Use of Science. . . 11 I 5. The Moral Sense 1* 

2. The Law of Honour 11 | 6. Human Happiness 18 

3. The Law of the Land 12 I 7. Virtue 26 

4. The Scriptures 13 | 

BOOK II. 

MORAL OBLIGATION. 



1. The Question, Why am I obliged to 

keep my word? considered 32 

2. What we mean when we say a Man 

is obliged to do a thing 33 

3. The Question, Why am 1 obliged to 

keep my word ? resumed 33 

4. The WiU of God 35 

5. The Divine Benevolence 36 



Utility 38 

The Necessity of General Rules. . . 39 
The Consideration of General Con- 
sequences pursued 40 

Of Right 42 

The Division of Rights 43 

The General Rights of Mankind. . . 46 



BOOK III. 

RELATIVE DUTIES. 
PART I. 

OP RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH ARE DETERMINATE. 



1. Of Property 51 

2. The Use of the Institution of Prop- 

erty 51 

3. The History of Property 53 

4. In what the Right of Property is 

founded 54 

5. Promises 57 

6. Contracts 64 

7. Contracts of Sale 65 

8. Contracts of Hazard 67 

9. Contracts of Lending of inconsuma- 

ble Property 68 

10. Contracts concerning the Lending 

of Money 70 



11. Contracts of Labour — Service 73 

12. Contracts of Labour — Commissions 75 

13. Contracts of Labour — Partnership. 76 

14. Contracts of Labour — Offices 77 

15. Lies 79 

16. Oaths 81 

17. Oaths in Evidence 85 

18. Oath of Allegiance 86 

19. Oath against Bribery in the Election 

of Members of Parliament 88 

20. Oath against Simony 88 

21. Oaths to observe Local Statutes. . . 90 

22. Subscription to Articles of Religion 91 

23. Wills 92 



PART II. 



OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH ARE INDETERMINATE, AND OF THE 
CRIMES OPPOSITE TO THESE. 



1. Charity 96 

2. Charity — The Treatment of our 

Domestics and Dependents. ... 96 

3. Slavery 97 

4. Charity — Professional Assistance. 99 

5. Charity — Pecuniary Bounty 101 

6. Resentment 106 



7. Anger 107 

8. Revenge 108 

9. Duelling 110 

10. Litigation 112 

11. Gratitude 114 

12. Slander 115 



CONTENTS. 



PART III. 

OP RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH RESULT FROM THE CONSTITUTION OF THE 



Chap. 



SEXES, AND OF THE CRIMES OPPOSED TO THESE, 

Page Chap. 



1. Of the Public Use of Marriage In- 

stitutions 117 

2. Fornication 118 

3. Seduction 121 

4. Adultery 123 

5. Incest 125 



Page 



.. Polygamy 126 

7. Divorce 129 

8. Marriage 133 

9. Of the Duty of Parents 135 

10. The Rights of Parents 144 

11. The Duty of Children 145 



BOOK IV. 

DUTIES TO OURSELVES, AND THE CRIMES OPPOSITE TO THESE. 

1. The Rights of Self-Defence 149 I 3. Suicide 154 

2. Drunkenness 151 



BOOK V. 



DUTIES TOWARD GOD. 



1. Division of ihese Duties 159 

2. Of the Duty and of the Efficacy of 

Prayer, so far as the same ap- 
pear from the Light of Nature. 159 

3. Of the Duty and Efficacy of Prayer, 

as represented in Scripture 163 

4. Of Private Prayer, Family Prayer, 

and Public Worship 165 



5. Of Forms of Prayer in Public Wor- 

ship 169 

6. Ofthe Use of Sabbatical Institutions 173 

7. Ofthe Scripture Account of Sabbat- 

ical Institutions 175 

8. By what Acts and Omissions the 

Duty of the Christian Sabbath is 
violated 182 

9. Of Reverencing the Deity 184 



BOOK VI. 



ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE. 



3. 



Of the Origin ot Civil Government 
How Subjection to Civil Govern- 
ment is maintained 

The Duty of Submission to Civil 
Government explained 

4. Ofthe Duty of Civil Obedience, as 

stated in the Christian Scriptures 

5. Of Civil Liberty 

6. Of different Forms of Government 

7. Of the British Constitution 



8. Of the Administration of Justice.. 235 

9. Of Crimes and Punishments 248 

10. Of Religious Establishments, and 

Toleration 262 

11. Of Population and Provision ; and 

of Agriculture and Commerce 

as subservient thereto 277 

12. Of War, and of MiUtary Establish- 

ments . , 300 



MORAL PHILOSOPHr 



BOOK I. 

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 
CHAPTER I. 

DEFINITION AND USE OF THE SCIENCE. 

Moral Philosophyj Morality, Ethics, Casuistry, Natural Law, mean 
all the same thing ; namely, That Science which teaches men their duty, 
and the reasons of it. 

The use of such a study depends upon this, that, without it, the rules 
of life, by which men are ordinarily governed, oftentimes mislead them, 
through a defect either in the rule or in the application. 

These rules are, the Law of Honour, the Law of the Land, and the 
Scriptures. 

CHAPTER n. 

THE LAW OF HONOUR. 

The Law of Honour is a system of rules constructed by people of 
fashion, and calculated to facilitate their intercourse with one another ; 
and for no other purpose. 

Consequently, nothing is adverted to by the Law of Honour, but 
what tends to incommode this intercourse. 

Hence this law only prescribes and regulates the duties betwixt 
equals ; omitting such as relate to the Supreme Being, as well as those 
which we owe to our inferiors. 

For which reason, profaneness, neglect of public worship or private 
A 2 



12 THE LAW OF THE LAND. 

devotion, cruelty to servants, rigorous treatment of tenants or other ae* 
pendants, want of charity to the poor, injuries done to tradesmen by in- 
solvency or delay of payment, with numberless examples of the same 
kind, are accounted no breaches of honour, because a man is not a less 
agreeable companion for these vices, nor the worse to deal with in those 
concerns which are usually transacted between one gentleman and 
another. 

Again ; the Law of Honour, being constituted by men occupied in 
the pursuit of pleasure, and for the mutual conveniency of such men, 
will be found, as might be expected from the character and design of 
the law-makers, to be, in most instances, favorable to the licentious in- 
dulgence of the natural passions. 

Thus it allows of fornication, adultery, drunkenness, prodigality, du- 
elling, and of revenge in the extreme, and lays no stress upon the vir- 
tues opposite to these. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE LAW OF THE LAND. 

That part of mankind who are beneath the Law of Honour often 
make the Law of the Land their rule of life ; that is, they are satisfied 
with themselves, so long as they do or omit nothing, for the doing or 
omitting of which the Law can punish them. 

Whereas every system of human Laws, considered as a rule of life, 
labours under the two following defects : — 

1. Human Laws omit many duties, as not objects of compulsion; 
such as piety to God, bounty to the poor, forgiveness of injuries, edu- 
cation of children, gratitude to benefactors. 

The law never speaks but to command, nor commands but where it 
can compel ; consequently those duties, which by their nature must be 
voluntary^ are left out of the statute book, as lying beyond the reach 
of its operation and authority. 

2. Human laws permit, or, which is the same thing, suffer to go un- 
punished, many crimes, because they are incapable of being defined by 
any previous description. Of which nature are luxury, prodigality, 
partiality in voting at those elections in which the qualifications of tbe 
candidate ought to determine the success, caprice in the disposition of 
men's fortunes at the- death, disrespect to parents, and a multitude. of 
similar examples. 

For, this is the alternative : either the law must define beforehand, 
and with precision the offences which it punishes ; or it must be left to 
the discretion of the magistrate to determine upon each particular accu- 
sation, whether it constitute that offence which the law designed to 
punish, or not ; which is, in effect, leaving to the magistrate to punish 
or not to punish, at his pleasure, the individual who is brought before him ; 
which is just so much tyranny. Where, therefore, as in the instances 



THE SCRIPTURES. 13 

above mentioned, the distinction between right and wrong is of too sub- 
tile or of too secret a nature to be ascertained by any preconcerted lan- 
guage, the law of most countries, especially of free states, rather than 
commit the liberty of the subject to the discretion of the magistrate, 
leaves men in such cases to themselves. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SCRIPTURES. 

Whoever expects to find in the Scriptures a specific direction for 
every moral doubt that arises looks for more than he will meet with. 
And to what magnitude such a detail of particular precepts would have 
enlarged the sacred volume, may be partly understood from the follow- 
ing consideration : — The laws of this country, including the acts of the 
legislature, and the decisions of our supreme courts of justice, are not 
contained in fewer than fifty folio volumes ] and yet it is not once in 
ten attempts that you can find the case you look for, in any law-book 
whatever ; to say nothing of those numerous points of conduct, con- 
cerning which the law professes not to prescribe or determine any thing. 
Had then the same particularity, which obtains in human laws so far 
as they go, been attempted in the Scriptures, throughout the whole ex- 
tent of morality, it is manifest they would have been by much too 
bulky to be either read or circulated : or rather, as St. John says, 
*' even the world itself could not contain the books that should be 
written." 

Morality is taught in Scripture in this wise. General rules are laid 
down of piety, justice, benevolence, and purity ; such as, worshipping 
God in spirit and in truth ] doing as we would be done by * loving our 
neighbour as ourselves ] forgiving others, as we expect forgiveness 
from God ] that mercy is better than sacrifice ; that not that which en- 
tereth into a man (nor, by parity of reason, any ceremonial pollutions,) 
but that which proceedeth from the heart, defiletH him. These rules 
are occasionally illustrated, Qit\iQY hj fictitious examples^ as in the.para- 
ble of the good Samaritan ; and of the cruel servant, who refused to his 
fellow servant that indulgence and compassion which his master had 
shewn to him; or in instances which actually presented themselves^ as 
in Christ's reproof of his disciples at the Samaritan village ; his praise 
of the poor widow, who cast in her last mite ] his censure of the Pha- 
risees who chose out the chief rooms— and of the tradition, whereby 
they evaded the command to sustain their indigent parents : or^ lastly, 
in the solution of questions, which those who were about our Saviour 
'proposed to him ; as his answer to the young man who asked him, 
'• What lack I yet ?" and to the honest scribe, who had found out, even 
in that age and country, that '^to love God and his neighbour, was 
more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifice." 

And this is in truth the way in which all practical sciences are 



14 THE MORAL SENSE. 

taught, as Arithmetic, Grammar, Navigation, and the like. Rules are 
laid down, and examples are subjoined : not that these examples are 
the cases, much less all the cases, which will actually occur ; but by 
way only of explaining the principle of the rule, and as so many spe- 
cimens of the method of applying it. The chief difference is, that the 
examples in Scripture are not annexed to the rules with the didactic re- 
gularity to which we are now-a-days accustomed, but delivered disper- 
sedly, as particular occasions suggested them ; which gave them, how- 
ever, (especially to those who heard them, and were present on the oc- 
casions which produced them,) an energy and persuasion, much be- 
yond what the same or any instances would have appeared with, in 
their places in a system. 

Beside this, the Scriptures commonly presuppose, in.the persons to 
whom they speak, a knowledge of the principles of natural justice; 
and are employed not so much to teach new rules of morality, as to en- 
force the practice of it by new sanctions, and by a greater certainty, 
which last seems to be the proper business of a revelation from God, 
and what was most wanted. 

Thus the " unjust, covenant-breakers, and extortioners," are con- 
demned in Scripture, supposing it known, or leaving it, where it admits 
of doubt, to moralists to determine what iajustice, extortion, or breach 
of covenant are. 

The above considerations are intended to prove that the Scriptures do 
not supersede the use of the science of which we profess to treat, and 
at the same time to acquit them of any charge of imperfection or insuffi- 
ciency on that account. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE MORAL SENSE. 

" The father of Cains Toranius had been proscribed by the triumvi- 
rate. Caius Toranius, coming over to the interests of that party, dis- 
covered to the officers, who were in pursuit of his father's life, the place 
where he concealed himself, and gave them withal a description, by 
which they might distinguish his person, when they found him. The 
old man, more anxious for the safety and fortunes of his son, than 
about the little that might remain of his own life, began immediately to 
inquire of the officers who seized him, whether his son was well ; 
whether he had done his duty to the satisfaction of his generals '? 
' That son (replied one of the officers,) so dear to thy affections, betray- 
ed thee to us ] by his information thou art apprehended, and diest.' 
The officer with this, struck a poniard to his heart, and the unhappy 
parent fell, not so much affected by his fate as by the means to which 
he owed it."* 

* " Caius Toranius triumvirum partes secutus, proscripti patris stri praetorii et 
ornati viri latebrag, aetatem, notasque corporis, quibus agnosci posset centurionibus 



THE MORAL SENSE. 1 5 

Now the question is, whether, if this story were related to the wild 
boy caught some years ago in the woods of Hanover, or to a savage 
without experience, and w^ithout instruction, cut off in his infancy from 
all intercourse with his species, and, consequently, under no possible 
influence of example, authority, education, sympathy, or habit • wheth- 
er, I say, such a one would feel, upon the relation, any degree of that 
sentiment of disapprobation of Toranius's conflict which we feel, or 
nof? 

They who maintain ttie existence of a moral sense ; of innate max- 
ims; of a natural conscience ; that the love of virtue and hatred of 
vice are instinctive, or the perception of right and wrong intuitive (all 
which are only different ways of expressing the same opmion,) affirm 
that he would. 

They who deny the existence of a moral sense, &c.. affirm that he 
would not. 

And, upon this, issue is joined. 

As the experiment has never been made, and from the difficulty of 
procuring a subject (not to mention the impossibility of proposing the 
question to him, if we haxi one,) is never likely to be made, what would 
be the event can only be judged of from probable reasons. . 

They who contend for the affirmative observe, that we approve ex- 
amples of generosity, gratitude, fidelity, &c., and condemn the contrary, 
instantly, without deliberation, without having any interest of our own 
concerned in them, ofttimes without being conscious of, or able to give 
any reason for, our approbation : that this approbation is uniform and 
universal, the same sorts of conduct being approved or disapproved in 
all ages and countries of the w^orld ) circumstances, say they, which 
strongly indicate the operation of an instinct or moral sense. 

On the other hand, answers have been given to most of these argu- 
aients, by the patrons of the opposite system ] and, 

First, as to the uniformity above alleged, they controvert the fact, 
rhey remark, from authentic accounts of historians and travellers, that 
there is scarcely a single vice which, in some age or country of the 
world, has not been countenanced by public opinion, that in one coun- 
try it is esteemed an office of piety in children to sustain their aged pa- 
rents : in another, to despatch them out of the way : that suicide, in 
one age of the world has been heroism, in another felony ; that theft, 
which is punished by most laws, by the laws of Sparta w^as not unfre- 
quently rewarded : that the promiscuous commerce of the sexes, al- 
though condemned by the regulations and censure of all civilized na- 
tions, is practised by the savages of the tropical regions without reserve, 
compunction or disgrace : that crimes, of which it is no longer permit- 
ted us even to speak, have had their advocates amongst the sages of 
very renowned times : that, if an inhabitant of the polished nations of 

edidit, qui eum persecuti sunt. Senex de filii magis vita et incrementis quaam de re 
liquo spiritu suo soHcitus, anincolumis esseque an imperatoribus satisfaceret, inter^ 
rogare eos ccBpit. E quibus unus : ' Ab illo,' inquit, * quern tantopere diligis, de- 
rnonstratus nostro ministerio, filii indicio occideri3 :' protinusque pectus ejus gladio 
trajecit. Collapsus itaque est infelix, auctore caedis, quam ipsa caede, miserior." — 
Valer. Max. lib. ix. cap. 11. 



16 THE MORAL SENSE. 

Europe be delighted with the appearance, wherever he meets with it, 
of happiness, tranquillity, and comfort, a wild American is no less di- 
verted with the writhings and contortions of a victim at the stake : that 
even amongst ourselves, and in the present improved state of moral 
knowledge, we are far from a perfect consent in our opinions or feel- 
ings : that you shall hear duelling alternately reprobated and applaud- 
ed, according to the sex, age, or station of the person you converse 
with : that the forgiveness of injuries and insults is accounted by one 
sort of people magnanimity, by another meanness : that in the above 
instances, and perhaps in most others, moral approbation follows the 
fashions and institutions of the country we live in ; which fashions 
also and institutions themselves have grown out of the exigencies, the 
climate, situation, or local circumstances of the country ; or have been 
set up by the authority of an arbitrary chieftam, or the unaccountable 
caprice of the multitude : all which, they observe, looks very little like 
the steady hand and indelible characters of Nature. But, 

Secondly, Because, after these exceptions and abatements, it cannot 
be denied but that some sorts of actions command and receive the es- 
teem of mankind more than others ] and that the approbation of them is 
general though not universal : as to this they say, that the general ap- 
probation of virtue, even in instances where we have no interest of our 
own to induce us to it, may be accounted for, without the assistance of 
a moral sense ] thus : 

" Having experienced, in some instance, a particular conduct to be 
beneficial to ourselves, or observed that it would be so, a sentiment of 
approbation rises up in our minds ; which sentiment afterwards accom- 
panies the idea or mention of the same conduct, although the private 
advantage which first excited it no longer exist." 

And this continuance of the passion, after the reason of it has ceased, 
is nothing more, say they, than what happens in other cases ] especial- 
ly in the love of money, which is in no person so eager as it is often- 
times found to be in a rich old miser, without family to provide for, or 
friend to oblige by it, and to whom consequently it is no longer (and he 
may be sensible of it too) of any real use or value ] yet is this man as 
much overjoyed with gain, and mortified by losses, as he, was the first 
day he opened his shop, and when his very subsistence depended upon 
his success in it. 

By these means the custom of approving certain actions commenced : 
and when once such a custom hath got footing in the world, it is no 
difficult thing to explain how it is transmitted and continued ] for then 
the greatest part of those who approve of virtue, approve of it from au- 
thority, by imitation, and from a habit of approving such and such ac- 
tions, inculcated in early youth, and receiving, as men grow up, con- 
tinual accessions of strength and vigor, from censure and encouragement 
from the books they read, the conversations they hear, the current ap- 
plication of epithets, the general turn of language, and the various other 
causes by which it universally comes to pass, that a society of men, 
touched in the feeblest degree with the same passion, soon communi- 



THK MOKAL SENSE. J 7 

cate to one another a great degree of it.* This is the case with most 
of us at present ; and is the cause also, that the process of association, 
described in the last paragraph but one, is little now either perceived or 
wanted. 

Amongst the causes assigned for the continuance and diffusion of the 
same moral sentiments among mankind, we have mentioned imitation. 
The efficacy of this principle is most observable in children : indeed, if 
there be any thing in them which deserves the name of an instinct^ it is 
i\iQ\i propensity to imitation. Now there is nothing which children 
imitate or apply more readily than expressions of affection and aver- 
sion, of approbation, hatred, resentment, and the like ] and when these 
passions and expressions are once connected, which they soon will be 
by the same association which unites words with their ideas, the pas- 
sion will follow the expression, and attach upon the object to which 
the child has been accustomed to apply the epithet. In a word, when 
almost every thing else is learned by imitation.^ can we wonder to find 
the same cause concerned in the generation of our moral sentiments ? 

Another considerable objection to the system of moral instincts is 
this, that there are no maxims in the science which can well be deemed 
innate, as none perhaps can be assigned which are absolutely and uni- 
versally true ; in other words, which do not bend to circumstances. 
Veracity, which seems, if any be, a natural duty, is excused in many 
cases towards an enemy, a thief, or a madman. The obligation of pro- 
mises, which is a first principle in morality, depends upon the circum- 
stances under which they were made : they may have been unlawful, 
or become so since, or inconsistent with former promises, or erroneous, 
or exported ; under all which cases, instances may be suggested, where 
the obligation to perform the promise would be very dubiows : and so of 
mosi other general rules, when they come to be actually applied. 

An argument has been also proposed on the same side of the question, 
of this kind. Together with the instinct, there must have been implant- 
ed, it is said, a clear and precise idea of the object upon which it was to 
attach. The instinct and the idea of the object are inseparable even in 
imagination, and as necessarily accompany each other as any correlative 
ideas whatever ] that is, in plainer terms, if we be prompted by nature 
to the approbation of particular actions, we must have received also from 
nature a distinct conception of the action we are thus prompted to ap- 
prove ] which we certainly have not received. 

But as this argument bears alike against all instincts, and against their 
existence in brutes as well as in men, it will hardly, I suppose, produce 
conviction, though it may be difficult to find an answer to it. 

Upon the whole, it seems to me, either that there exist no such instincts 

*"From instances of popular tumnlts, seditions, factions, panics, and of all passions 
which are shared with a multitude, we may learn the influence of society, in exciting 
and supporting any emotion ; while the most ungovernable disorders are raised, we 
find, by that means, from the slightest and most frivolous occasions. He must be 
more or less than man who kindles not in the common blaze. What wonder then, 
that monU sentiments are found of such influence in life, though springing from prin- 
ciples which may appear, at first sight, somewhat small and delicate." — Hume't In 
qniru concerning the Principles of Morals, Sect. ix. p. .326. 



18 HUMAN HAPPINESS. 

as compose what is called the moral sense, or that they are not now to 
be distinguished from prejudices and habits • on which account they 
cannot be depended upon in moral reasoning : I mean, tLat it is not a 
eafe way of arguing, to assume certain principles as so many dictates, 
impulses, and instincts of nature, and then to draw conclusions from 
these principles, as to the rectitude or wrongness of actions, independent 
of the tendency of such actions, or of any other consideration whatever. 

Aristotle lays down, as a fundamental and self-evident maxim, that 
nature intended barbarians to be slaves ; and proceeds to deduce from 
this maxim a train of conclusions, calculated to justify the policy which 
then prevailed. And I question whether the same maxim be not still 
self-evident to the company of merchants trading to the coast of Africa. 

Nothing is so soon made as a maxim ; and it appears from the exam- 
ple of Aristotle, that authority and convenience, education, prejudice, 
and general practice have no small share in the making of them ; and 
that the laws of custom are very apt to be mistaken for the order of 
nature. 

For which reason, I suspect, that a system of morality, built upon 
instincts, will only find out reasons and excuses for opinions and 
practices already established — will seldom correct or reform either. 

But further, suppose w^e admit the existence of these instincts ; what, 
it may be asked, is their authority '? No man, you say, can act in deli- 
berate opposition to them, without a secret remorse of conscience. But 
this remorse may be borne with : and if the sinner choose to bear with 
it, for the sake of the pleasure or the profit which he expects from his 
wickedness ] or finds the pleasure of the sin to exceed the remorse of 
conscience, of which he alone is the judge, and concerning which, 
when he feels them both together, he can hardly be mistaken, the mo- 
ral'instinct man, so far as I can understand, has nothing more to offer. 

For if he allege that these instincts are so many indications of the 
will of God, and consequently presages of what we are to look for 
hereafter ] this, I answer, is to resort to a rule and a motive ulterior 
to the instincts themselves, and at which rule and motive we shall by 
and by arrive by a surer road : I say surer^ so long as there remains a 
controversy whether there be any instinctive maxims at all ] or any 
difficulty in ascertaining what maxims are instinctive. 

This celebrated question therefore becomes in our system, a ques- 
tion of pure curiosity ] and as such, we dismiss it to the determina- 
tion of those who are more inquisitive, than we are concerned to be, 
about the natural history and constitution of the human species. 



CHAPTER VI. 

HUMAN HAPPINESS. 

The word happy is a relative term : that is, when we call a man 
happv^ we mean that he is happier than some others, with whom we 
compare him, thanthegenerality of others ; or than he himself was in 



HUMAN HAPPINESS. 19 

some other situation : thus, speaking of one who has just compassed the 
object of a long pursuit, " Now," we say, " he is happy f and in a hke 
comparative sense, compared, that is, with the general lot of mankind, 
we call a man happy who possesses health and competency. 

In strictness, any condition may be denominated happy, in which the 
amount or aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of pain ] and the degree 
of happiness depends upon the quantity of this excess. 

And the greatest quantity of it ordinarily attainable in human life is 
what we mean by happiness, when we inquire or pronounce what hu- 
man happiness consists in.* 

In which inquiry I will omit much usual declamation on the dignity 
and capacity of our nature ] the superiority of the soul to the body, of 
the rational to the animal part of our constitution ; upon the worthiness, 
refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, gross- 
ness, and sensuality of others : because I hold that pleasures diiFer in 
nothing but in continuance and intensity : from a just computation of 
which, confirmed by what we observe of the apparent cheerfulness, 
tranquillity, and contentment of men of different tastes, tempers, stations, 
and pursuits, every question concerning human happiness must receive 
its decision. 

It will be our business to show, if we can, 

1 . What Human Happiness does not consist in : 

2. What it does consist in. 

First, then, Happiness does not consist in the pleasures of sense, in 
whatever profusion or variety they be enjoyed. By the pleasures of 
sense, I mean, as well as the animal gratifi ations of eating, drinking, and 
that by which the species is continued, as the more refined pleasures of 
music, painting, architecture, gardening, splendid shows, theatric exhibi- 
tions ] and the pleasures, lastly, of active sports, as of hunting, shooting, 
fishing, &c. For, 

1st, These pleasures continue but a Httle while at a time. This is 
true of them all, especially of the grosser sort of them. Laying aside 

♦ \{ Bny positive signification, dis+'nct from what we mean by pleasure, can be affix- 
e'l to the terra " happiness,-' I should take it to denote a certain state of the nervous 
system in that part of the human frame in which we feel joy and grief, passions and 
affections. Whether this part be the heart, which the turn of most languages would 
lead us to beli-?ve, or the diaphragm, as Buffon, or the upper orifice of the stomach, as 
Van Halmont thought ; or rather be a kind of fine net-work, lining the whole region 
of the prsecordia, as others have imagined \ it is possible, not only that each painful 
sensation may violently shake and disturb the fibres at the time, but that a series of 
such may at length so derange the texture of the system as to produce a perpetual 
irritation, which will show itself by fretfulness, impatience, and restlessness. It is 
possible also, on the other hand, that a succession of pleasurable sensations may have 
.'•jch an effect upon this subtile organization ds to cause the fibres to relax, and re- 
turn into their place and order, and thereby to recover, or, if not lost, to preserve that 
harmonious confirmation which gives to the mind its sense of complacency and satis- 
faction. This state may be denominated happiness, and is so far distinguishable from 
pleasure, that it does not refer to any particular object of enjoyment, or consist, like 
pleasure, in the gratification of one or more of the senses, but is rather the secondary 
effect which iuch objects and gratifications produce upon the nervous system, or the 
state in which they leave it. These conjectures belong not, however, to our province. 
The comparative sense in which we have explained the term Happiness, isrfiore pop- 
ular, and is sufficient for the purpose of the present chapter. 



'ZO HUMAN HAPPINESS. 

the preparation and the expectation, and computing strictly the actual 
sensation, we shall be surprised to find how inconsiderable a portion of 
our time they occupy, how few hours in the four and twenty they are 
able to fill up. 

2dly, These pleasures, by repetition, lose their relish. It is a pro- 
perty of the machine, for which we know no remedy, that the organs 
by which we perceive pleasure are blunted and benumbed by being 
frequently exercised in the same way. There is hardly any one who 
has not found the difference between a gratification, when new, and 
when familiar ; or any pleasure which does not become indifferent as it 
grows habitual. 

3dly, The eagerness for high and intense delights takes away the 
relish from all others ; and as such delights fall rarely in our way, the 
greater part of our time becomes, from this cause, empty and uneasy. 

There is hardly any delusion by which men are greater sufferers in 
their happiness than by their expecting too much from what is called 
pleasure * that is, from those intense dehghts which vulgarly engross 
the name of pleasure. The very expectation spoils them. When they 
do come, we are often engaged in taking pains to persuade ourselves 
how much we are pleased, rather than enjoying any pleasure which 
springs naturally out of the object. And whenever we depend upon 
being vastly delighted, we always go home secretly grieved at missing 
our aim. Likewise, as has been observed just now, when this humour 
of being prodigiously delighted has once taken hold of the imagination, 
it hinders us from providing for. or acquiescing in, those gently soothing 
engagements, the due variety and su '^cession of which are the only things 
that supply a vein or continued stream of happiness. 

What I have been able to observe of that part of mankind, whose 
professed pursuit is pleasure, and who are withheld in the pursuit by no 
restraints of fortune, or scruples of consciences, corresponds sufficiently 
with this account. I have commonly remarked in such men a restless 
and inextinguishable passion for variety, a great part of their time to be 
vacant, and so much of it irksome ; and that, with whatever eagerness 
and expectation they set out, they become, by degrees, fastidious in their 
choice of pleasures, languid in the enjoyment, yet miserable under the 
want of it. 

The truth seems to be, that there is a limit at which these pleasures 
soon arrive, and from which they ever afterwards decline. They are 
by necessity of short duration, as the organs cannot hold on their emo- 
tions beyond a certain length of time ', and if you endeavour to compen- 
sate for this imperfection in their nature by the frequency with which 
you repeat them, you suffer more than you gain by the fatigue of the 
faculties, and the diminution of sensibility. 

We have said nothing in this account, of the loss of opportunities or 
the decay of faculties, which, whenever they happen, leave the volup- 
tuary destitute and desperate ; teased by desires that can never be grati- 
led, and the memory of pleasures which must return no more. 

It will also be allowed by those who have experienced it, and perhaps 
ty those alone, that pleasure which is purchased by the encumbrance 



HUMAN HAPPINESS. 21 

ol our fortune, is purchased too dear ] the pleasure never compensating 
for the perpetual irritation of embarrassed circumstances. 

These pleasures, after all, have their value ; and as the young are 
always too eager in their pursuit of them, the old are sometimes too re- 
miss, that is, too studious of their ease, to be at the pains for them which 
they really deserve. 

Secondly 3 Neither does happiness consist in an exemption from 
pain, labour, care, business, suspense, molestation, and " those evils 
which are without :*' such a state being usually attended, not with ease, 
but with depression of spirits, a tastelessness in all our ideas, imaginary 
anxieties, and the whole train of hypochondriacal affections. 

For which reason, the expectations of those who retire from their 
shops and counting houses, to enjoy the remainder of their days in leis- 
ure and tranquillity, are seldom answered by the effect ; much less of 
such as. in a fit of chagrin, shut themselves up in cloisters and hermi- 
tages, or quit the world, and their stations in it, for solitude and repose. 

Where there exists a known external cause of uneasiness, the cause 
may be removed, and the uneasiness will cease. But those imaginary 
distresses which men feel for want of real ones (and which are equally 
tormenting, and so far equally,) as they depend upon no single or assign- 
ible subject of uneasiness, admit oftentimes of no application of relief. 

Hence a moderate pain, upon which the attention may fasten and 
spend itself, is to many a refreshment, as a fit of the gout will sometimes 
cure the spleen. And the same of any less violent agitation of the mind, 
as a literary controversy, a lawsuit, a contested election, and, above all, 
gaming ; the passion for which, in men of fortune and liberal minds, is 
)nly to be accounted for on this principle. 

Thirdly ', Neither does happiness consist in greatness, rank, or ele 
rated station. 

Were it true that all superiority afforded pleasure, it would follow, 
.hat by how much we were the greater, that is, the more persons we 
were superior to, in the same proportion, so far as depended upon this 
cause, we should be the happier ; but so it is, that no superiority yields 
any satisfaction, save that which we possess or obtain over those with 
whom we immediately compare ourselves. The shepherd perceives no 
pleasure in his superiority over his dog : the farmer in his superiority 
over the shepherd ] the lord, in his superiority over the farmer : nor the 
king, lastly, m his superiority over the lord. Superiority, where there is 
no competition, is seldom contemplated ] what most men are quite un- 
conscious of. 

But if the same shepherd can run, fight, or wrestle, better than the 
peasants of his village ] if the farmer can show better cattle, if he keep 
a better horse, or be supposed to have a longer purse, than any farmer 
in the hundred ; if the lord have more interest in an election, greater 
favour at court, a better house, or larger estate than any nobleman in 
the country ; if the king possess a more extensive territory, a more 
powerful fleet or army, a more splendid establishment, more loyal sub- 
jects, or more weight and authority in adjusting the affairs of nations, 
than any prince in Europe ; — in all these cases, the parties feel an ac- 
tual satisfaction in their superiority. 



22 HUMAN HAPPINESS. 

Now the conclusion that follows from hence is this ; that the plea^ 
sures of ambition, which are supposed to be peculiar to high stations, 
are in reality common to all conditions. The farrier who shoes a horse 
better, and who is in greater request for his skill than any man within 
ten miles of him, possesses, for all that I can see, the delight of distinc- 
tion and of excelling, as truly and substantially as the statesman, the 
soldier, and the scholar, who have filled Europe with the reputation of 
their wisdom, their valour, or their knowledge. 

No superiority appears to be of any account, but superiority over a 
rival. This, it is manifest, may exist wherever rivalships do ] and rival- 
ships fall out among men of all ranks and degrees. The object of 
emulation, the dignity or magnitude of this object makes no difference', 
as it is not what either possesses that constitutes the pleasure, but what 
one possesses more than the other. 

Philosophy smiles at the contempt with which the rich and great 
speak of the petty strifes and competitions of the poor ] not reflecting 
that these strifes and competitions are just as reasonable as their own 
and the pleasures which success affords, the same. 

Our position is, that happiness does not consist in greatness. And 
this position we make out by showing, that even what are supposed to 
be the peculiar advantages of greatness, the pleasures of ambition and 
superiority, are in reality common to all conditions. But whether the 
pursuits of ambition be ever wise, whether they contribute more to the 
happiness or misery of the pursuers, is a different question ; and a 
question concerning which we may be allowed to entertain great doubt. 
The pleasure of success is exquisite ; so also is the anxiety of the pur- 
suit, and the pain of disappointment : — and what is the worst part of 
the account, the pleasure is short-lived. We soon cease to look back 
upon those whom we have left behind ] new contests are engaged in, 
new prospects unfold themselves ] a succession of struggles is kept up, 
while there is a rival left within the compass of our views and profes- 
sion ] and when there is none, the pleasure with the pursuit is at an 
end. 

II. We have seen what happiness does not consist in. We are next 
to consider in what it does consist. 

In the conduct of life the great matter is to know beforehand what 
will please us, and what pleasure will hold out. So far as we know 
this, our choice will be justified by the event. And this knowledge is 
more scarce and difficult than at first sight it may seem to be ; for some- 
times pleasures, which are wonderfully alluring and flattering in the 
prospect, turn out in the possession extremely insipid ] or do not hold 
out as we expected : at other times pleasures start up which never en- 
tered into our calculation ] and which we might have missed of by not 
foreseeing : whence we have reason to believe, that we actually do 
miss of many pleasures from the same cause. I say to know " before- 
hand ;" for, after the experiment is tried, it is commonly impracticable 
to retreat or change ] besides that shifting and changing is apt to gene- 
rate a habit of restlessness, which is destructive of the happiness of 
every condition. 



HUMAN HAPPINESS. 23 

By the reason of the original diversity of taste, capacity, and consti- 
tution, observable in the human species, and the still greater variety 
which habit and fashion have introduced in these particulars, it is im- 
possible to propose any plan of happiness which will succeed to all, or 
any method of life which is universally eligible or practicable. 

All that can be said is, that there remains a presumption in favor of 
those conditions of life, in which men generally appear most cheerful 
and contented. For though the apparent happiness of mankind be not 
always a true measure of their real happiness, it is the best measure we 
have. 

Taking this for my guide, I am inclined to believe that happiness 
consists, 

1. In the exercise of the social affections. 

Those persons commonly possess good spirits who have about them 
many objects of affection and endearment, as wife, children, kindred, 
friends. And to the want of these may be imputed the peevishness of 
monks, and of such as lead a monastic life. 

Of the same nature with the indulgence of our domestic affections, 
and equally refreshing to the spirits, is the pleasure which results from 
acts of bounty and beneficence, exercised either in giving money, or in 
imparting, to those who want it, the assistance of our skill and profes- 
sion. 

Another main article of human happiness is, 

2. The exercise of our faculties, either of body or mind, in the pur- 
suit of some engaging end. 

It seems to be true, that no plenitude of present gratifications can 
make the possessor happy for a continuance, unless he have something 
in reserve — something to hope for, and look forward to. This I con- 
clude to be the case, from comparing the alacrity and spirits of men 
who are engaged in any pursuit which interests them, with the dejec- 
tion and ennui of almost all, who are either born to so much that they 
want nothing more, or who have used up their satisfactions too soon, 
and drained the sources of them. 

It is this intolerable vacuity of mind which carries the rich and great 
to the horse course and the gaming table ; and often engages them in 
contests and pursuits, of which the success bears no proportion to the 
solicitude and expense with which it is sought. An election for a dis- 
puted borough shall cost the parties twenty or thirty thousand pounds 
each, — to say nothing of the anxiety, humiliation, and fatigue of the 
canvass ', when a seat in the House of Commons, of exactly the same 
value, may be had for a tenth part of the money, and with no trouble. 
I do not mention this to blame the rich and great (perhaps they cannot 
do better,) but in confirmation of what I have advanced. 

Hope, which thus appears to be of so much importance to our happi- 
ness, is of two kinds • — where there is something to be done towards 
attaining the object of our hope, and where there is nothing to be done. 
The first alone is of any value : the latter being apt to corrupt into im- 
patience, having no power but to sit stiU and wait, which soon grows 
tiresome. 



24 HUMAN HAPPINESS. 

The doctrine delivered under this head may be readily admitted ; but 
how to provide ourselves with a succession of pleasurable engagements 
is the difficulty. This requires two things : judgment in the choice of 
ends adapted to our opportunities; and a command of imagination, so 
as to be able, when the judgment has made choice of an end, to trans- 
fer a pleasure to the means : after which, the end may be forgotten as 
soon as we will. 

Hence those pleasures are most valuable, not which are most exqui- 
site in the fruition, but which are most productive of engagement and 
activity in the pursuit. 

A man who is in earnest in his endeavors after the happiness of a 
future state has, in this respect, an advantage over all the world ] for 
he has constantly before his eyes an object of supreme importance, pro- 
ductive of perpetual engagement and activity, and of which the pursuit 
(which can be said of no pursuit besides) lasts him to his life's end. 
Yet even he must have many ends, besides the /ar end ; but then they 
will conduct to that, be subordinate, and in some way or other capable 
of being referred to that, and derive their satisfaction, or an addition of 
satisfaction, from that. 

Engagement is every thing : the more significant, however, our en- 
gagements are, the better ; such as the planning of laws, institutions, 
manufactures, charities, improvements, public works ; and the endea- 
voring, by our interest, address, solicitations, and activity, to carry 
them into effect : or, upon a smaller scale, the procuring of a mainte- 
nance and fortune for our families by a course of industry and applica- 
tion to our callmgs, which forms and gives motion to the common oc- 
cupations of life ; training up a child ; prosecuting a scheme for his 
future establishment ] making ourselves masters of a language or a 
science ; improving or managing an estate ; laboring after a piece of 
preferment : and lastly, any engagement which is mnocent is better than 
none ] as the writing of a book, the building of a house, the laying out 
of a garden, the digging of a fish pond — even the raising of a cucumber 
or a tulip. 

Whilst our minds are taken up with the objects or business before us 
we are commonly happy, whatever the object or business be * when the 
mind is absent and the thoughts are wandering to something else than 
what is passing in the place in which we are, we are often miserable. 

3. Happiness depends upon the prudent constitution of the habits. 

The art in which the secret of human happiness in a great measure 
consists, is to set the habits in such a manner, that every change may 
be a change for the better. The habits themselves are much the same , 
for whatever is made habitual becomes smooth, and easy, and nearly 
indifferent. The return to an old habit is likewise easy, whatever the 
habit be. Therefore the advantage is with those habits which allow 
of an indulgence in the deviation from them. The luxurious receive 
no greater pleasures from their dainties than the peasant does from his 
bread and cheese : but the peasant, whenever he goes abroad, finds a 
feast ; whereas the epicure must be well entertained to escape disgust. 
Those who sperd every day at cards, and those who go every day to 



HUMA.N HAPPINESS. 26 

ploui^h, pass their time much alike ; intent upon what they are about, 
wiinting nothing, regretting nothing, they are both for the time in a state 
of ease : but then, whatever suspends the occupation of the card player 
distresses him ] whereas to the laborer every interruption is a refresh- 
ment : and this appears in the different effects that Sunday produces 
upon the two, which proves a day of recreation to the one, but a lament- 
able burden to the other. The man who has learned to live alone 
feels his spirits enlivened whenever he enters into company, and takes 
his leave without regret ; another, who has long been accustomed to a 
crowd, or continual succession of company, experiences in company no 
elevation of spirits, nor any greater satisfaction than what the man of a 
retired life finds in his chimney corner. So far their conditions are 
equal : but let a change of place, fortune, or situation separate the com- 
panion from his circle, his visitors, his club, common room, or coffee- 
house ; and the difference and advantage in the choice and constitution 
of the two habits will show itself. Solitude comes to the one clothed 
with melancholy ; to the other it brings liberty and quiet. You will 
see the one fretful and restless, at a loss how to dispose of his time till 
the hour come round when he may forget himself in bed : the other, 
easy and satisfied, taking up his book or his pipe as soon as he finds 
himself alone ] ready to admit any little amusement that casts up, or to 
turn his hands and attention to the first business that presents itself ; or 
content, without either, to sit still, and let his train of thought glide in- 
dolently through his brain, without much use, perhaps, or pleasure, but 
without hankering after any thing better, or without irritation. A read- 
er, who has inured himself to books of science and argumentation, if 
a novel, a well written pamphlet, an article of news, a narrative of a 
curious voyage, or a journal of a traveller fall in his way, sits down to 
the repast with relish ; enjoys his entertainment while it lasts, and can 
return when it is over, to his graver reading without distaste. Anoth- 
er, with whom nothing will go down but works of humour and plea- 
santry, or whose curiosity must be interested by perpetual novelty, will 
consume a bookseller's window in half a forenoon * during w^hich time 
he is rather in search of diversion than diverted : and as books to his 
taste are few and short, and rapidly read over, the stock is soon ex- 
hausted, when he is left without resource from this principal supply of 
harmless amusement. 

So far as circumstances of fortune conduce to happiness, it is not the 
income which any man possesses, but the increase of income that 
affords the pleasure. Two persons, of whom one begins with a hun- 
dred, and advances his income to a thousand pounds a year, and the 
other sets off with a thousand, and dwindles down to a hundred, may, 
in the course of their time, have the receipt and spending of the same 
sum of money; yet their satisfaction, so far as fortune is concerned in 
it, will be very different : the series and sum total of their incomes being 
the same, it makes a wide difference at which end they begin. 

4. Happiness consists in health. 

By health I understand, as well freedom from bodily distempers, as 
that tranquillity, firmness, and alacrity of mind, which we call good 

B 



26 VIRTUE. 

spirits ; and which may properly enough be included, in our notion of 
health, as depending commonly upon the same causes, and yielding to 
the same management, as our bodily constitution. 

Health, in this sense, is the one thing needful. Therefore no pains, 
expense, self-denial, or restraint to which we subject ourselves for the 
sake of health, is too much. Whether it require us to rehnquish lucra- 
tive situations, to abstain from favorite indulgences, to control intem- 
perate passions, or undergo tedious regimens ; whatever difficulties it 
lays us under, a man, who pursues his happiness rationally and reso- 
lutely, will be content to submit. 

When we are in perfect health and spirits, we feel in ourselves a 
happiness independent of any particular outward gratification whatever, 
and of which we can give no account. This is an enjoyment which 
the Deity has annexed to life ; and it probably constitutes, in a great 
measure, the happiness of infants and brutes, especially of the lower 
and sedentary orders of animals, as of oysters, periwinkles, and the like ', 
for which I have sometimes been at a loss to find out amusement. 

The above account of human happiness will justify the two follow- 
ing conclusions, which, although found in most books of morality, have 
seldom, I think, been supported by any sufficient reason : 

First, That happiness is pretty equally distributed among the dif- 
ferent orders of civil society : 

Secondly, That vice has no advantage over virtue, even with re- 
spect to this world's happiness. 



CHAPTER VII. 

VIRTUE. 

Virtue is " the doing good ^o mankind, in obedience to th^ will of 
God^ and for the sake of everlasting ho/ppiness?'' 

According to which definition, " the good of mankind," is the sub- 
ject ; the "will of God," the rule; and " everlasting happiness," the 
motive, of human virtue. 

Virtue has been divided by some moralists into benevolence, prudence, 
fortitude^ and temperance. Benevolence proposes good ends ; prudence 
suggests the best means of attaining them ; fortitude enables us to en- 
counter the difficulties, dangers, and discouragements which stand in 
our way in pursuit of these ends ] temperance repels and overcomes the 
passions that obstruct it. Benevolence, for instance, prompts us to un- 
dertake the cause of an oppressed orphan ; prudence suggests the best 
means of going about it ; fortitude enables us to confront the danger, 
and bear up against the loss, disgrace, or repulse that may attend our 
undertaking ; and temperance keeps under the love of money, of ease, 
or amusement which might divert us from it. 

Virtue is distinguished by others into two branches only, prudence 
anri benevolence : prudence, attentive to our own interest; benevolence. 



VIRTUE. 2^ 

to that of our fellow creatures : both directed to the same end, the in 
crease of happiness in nature ; and taking equal concern in the future 
as in the present. 

The four cardinal vir^aes ave prudence, fortitude, temperance, and 
justice. 

But the division of virtue, to which we are in modern times most ac- 
customed, is into duties : 

Towards God ; as piety, reverence, resignation, gratitude, &c. 

Towards other men (or relative duties;) as justice, charity, fidelity 
loyalty, &c. 

Towards ourselves ; as chastity, sobriety, temperance, preservation 
of life, care of health, &c. 

jMore of these distinctions have been proposed, which it is not worth 
while to set down. 



I shall proceed to state a few observations, which relate to the gene- 
ral regulation of human conduct ] unconnected indeed with each other, 
but very worthy of attention ] and which fall as properly under the 
title of this chapter as of any future one. 

1. Mankind act more from habit than reflection. 

It is on few only and great occasions that men deliberate at all ] on 
fewer still, that they institute any thing like a regular inquiry into the 
moral rectitude or depravity of what they are about to do • or wait for 
the result of it. We are for the most part determineS at once ; and by 
an impulse, which is the efect and energy of pre-established habits. 
And this constitution seems well adapted to the exigencies of human 
life, and to the imbecility of our moral principle. In the current occa- 
sions and rapid opportunities of life, there is oftentimes little leisure for 
reflection : and were there more, a man, who has to reason about his 
duty, when the temptation to transgress it is upon him, is almost sure 
to reason himself into an error. 

If we are in so great a degree passive under our habits, Where, it is 
asked, is the exercise of virtue, the guilt of vice, or any use of moral 
and religious knowledge '? I answer, In the forming and contracting 
of these habits. 

And hence results a rule of life of considerable importance, viz. 
that many things are to be done and abstained from, solely for the sake 
of habit. We will explain ourselves by an example or two. A beg- 
gar, with the appearance of extreme distress, asks our charity. If we 
come to argue the matter, whether the distress be real, whether it be 
not brought upon himself, whether it be of public advantage to admit 
such apphcation, whether it be not to encourage idleness and vagrancy, 
whether it may not invite impostors to our doors, whether the money 
can be well spared, or might not be better applied ; when these conside- 
rations are put together, it may appear very doubtful, whether we ought 
or ought not to give any thing. But when we reflect, that the misery 
before our eyes excites our pity, whether we wiU or not; that it is of 



28 VIRTUE. 

the utmost consequence to us to cultivate this tenderness of mind j that 
it is a quality cherished hy indulgence, and soon stifled by opposition ; 
when this, 1 say, is considered, a wise man will do that for his own 
sake which he would have hesitated to do for the petitioners ; he will 
give way to his compassion rather than offer violence to a habit of so 
much general use. 

A man of confirmed good habits will act in the same manner, with- 
out any consideration at all. 

This may serve for one instance : another is the following : — ^A man 
has been brought up from his infancy with a dread of lying. An oc- 
casion presents itself where, at the expense of a little veracity, he may 
divert his company, set off his own wit with advantage, attract the no- 
tice and engage the partiality of all about him. This is not a small 
temptation. And when he looks at the other side of the question, he 
sees no mischief that can ensue from this liberty, no slander of any 
man's reputation, no prejudice likely to arise to any man's interest. 
Were there nothing further to be considered, it would be difficult to 
show why a man under such circumstances might not indulge his hu- 
mor. But when he reflects that his scruples about lying have hitherto 
preserved him free from this vice ; that occasions like the present will 
return, where the inducement will be equally strong, but the indulgence 
much less innocent ; that his scruples will wear away by a few trans- 
gressions, and leave him subject to one of the meanest and most perni- 
cious of all bad habits, — a habit of lying, whenever it will serve his 
turn : when all4his, I say, is considered, a wise man will forego the 
present, or a much greater pleasure, rather than lay the foundation of 
a character so vicious and contemptible. 

From what has been said may be explained also the nature of Aa- 
bitual virtue. By the definition of virtue, placed at the beginning of 
this chapter, it appears, that the good of mankind is the subject, the 
will of God the rule, and everlasting happiness the motive and end of 
all virtue. Yet, in fact, a man shall perform many an act of virtue, 
without having either the good of mankind, the will of God, or ever- 
lasting happiness in his thought. How is this to be understood ? In 
the same manner as that a man may be a very good servant, without 
being conscious at every turn of a particular regard to his master's will, 
or of an express attention to his master's interest ; indeed, your best old 
servants are of this sort : but then he must have served for a length of 
time under the actual direction of these motives to bring it to this ; in 
which service his merit and virtue consist. 

There are habits, not only of drinking, swearing, and lying, and of 
some other things, which are commonly acknowledged to be habits, 
and called so ; but of every modification of action, speech, and thought : 
Man is a bundle of habits. 

There are habits of industry, attention, vigilaoce, advertency ; of a 
prompt obedience to the judgment occurring, or of yielding to the first 
impulse of passion ; of extending our views to the future, or of rest- 
ing upon the present ; of apprehending, methodizing, reasoning • of in- 
dolence and di^atori^ess; of vanity, self-conceit, melancholy, partiality; 



VIRTUE. 29 

of rretfuliiess, suspicion, captiousness, censoriousness 3 of pride, ambi- 
tion, covetousness; of overreaching, intriguing, projecting ; in a word, 
there is not a quality or function, either of body or mind, which does 
not feel the influence of this great law of animated nature. 

2. The Christian Religion hath not ascertained the precise quantity 
of virtue necessary to salvation. 

This has been made an objection to Christianity ] but without reason. 
For, as all revelation, however imparted originally, must be transmit- 
ted by the ordinary vehicle of language, it behooves those who make the 
objection to show, that any form of words could be devised, that might 
express this quantity ; or that it is possible to constitute a standard of 
moral attainments, accommodated to the almost infinite diversity which 
subsists in the capacities and opportunities of different men. 

It seems most agreeable to our conceptions of justice, and is conso- 
nant enough to the language of Scripture,* to suppose that there are 
prepared for us rewards and punishments of all possible degrees, from 
the most exalted happiness down to extreme misery : so that "our la- 
bor is never in vain :" whatever advancement we make in virtue, we 
procure a proportionable accession of future happiness ; as, on the other 
hand, every accumulation of vice is the " treasuring up so much wrath 
against the day of wrath." It has been said, that it can never be a just 
economy of Providence, to admit one part of mankind into heaven, and 
condemn the other to hell ; since there must be very little to choose, 
between the worst man who is received into heaven, and the best who 
is excluded. And how know we, it might be answered, but that there 
may be as little to choose in the conditions ? 

Without entering into a detail of Scripture morality, which would 
anticipate our subject, the following general positions may be advanced, 
I think, with safety. 

1 . That a state of happiness is not to be expected by those who are 
conscious of no moral or religious rule : I mean those who cannot with 
truth say, that they have been prompted to one action, or withholden 
from one gratification, by any regard to virtue or rehgion, either imme- 
diate or habitual. 

There needs no other proof of this, than the consideration that a brute 
would be as proper an object of reward as such a man, and that, if the 
case were so, the penal sanctions of religion could have no place. For, 
whom would you punish, if you make such a one as this happy ? or 
rather, indeed, religion itself, both natural and revealed, w^ould cease to 
have either use or authority. 

♦ " He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly ; and he which soweth 
bountifully shall reap also bountifully." 2 Cor. ix. 6 — •' And that servant which 
knew his Lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, 
shall be beaten with many stripes ; but he that knew not shall be beaten with few 
stripes." Luke xii. 47, 48 — " Whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink in 
my name, because ye belong to Christ ; verily I say unto you, he shall not lose his 
reward ;" to wit, intimating that there is in reserve a proportionable reward for evea 
the smallest act of virtue. Mark ix. 41. — See also the parable of the pounds, Luke 
xix 16, &,c. ; where he whose pound had gained ten pounds, was placed over tea 
cities J and he whose pound had gained five pounds, was placed over five cities. 



30 VIRTUE. 

2 That a state of happiness is not to be ^jxpected by tliose who re- 
serve to themselves the habitual practice of any one sin, or neglect of 
one knov^n duty ; 

Because no obedience can proceed upon proper motives, which is not 
universal, that is, which is not directed to every command of God alike, 
as they all stand upon the same authority ; 

Because such an allowance would in effect amount to a toleration of 
every vice in the world ; 

And because the strain of Scripture language excludes any such 
hope. When our duties are recited, they are put collectively^ that is, as 
all and every of them required in the Christian character. " Add to 
your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge tempe- 
rance, and to temperance patience, and to patience godliness, and to god- 
liness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness charity."* On the 
other hand, when vices are enumerated, they are put disjunctively, that 
is, as separately and severally excluding the sinner from heaven. 
" Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor 
abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor 
drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners shall inherit the kingdom of 
God." t 

Those texts of Scripture which seem to lean a contrary way, as that 
" charity shall cover the multitude of sins ;"t that '' he which convert- 
eth a sinner from the error of his way shall hide a multitude of sins ;"§ 
cannot, I think, for the reasons above mentioned, be extended to sins 
deliberately, habitually, and obstinately persisted in. 

3. That a state of mere unprofitableness v/ill not go unpunished. 
This is expressly laid down by Christ, in the parable of the talents, 

which supersedes all further reasoning upon the subject. '' Then he 
which had received one talent came, and said, Lord, I knew thee that 
thou art an austere man, reaping where thou hast not sown, and gath- 
ering where thou hast not strewed : and I was afraid, and hid thy 
talent in the earth ; lo, there thou hast that is thine. His lord answer- 
ed and said unto him. Thou Wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest 
(or knewest thou ?) that I reap where I sowed not, and gather where I 
have not strewed ; thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to 
the exchangers, and then, at my coming, I should have received mine 
own with usury. Take therefore the talent from him, and give it unto 
him which hath ten talents ; for unto every one that hath shall be 
given, and he shall have abundance * but from him that hath not shall 
be taken away even that which he hath : and cast ye the unprofitable 
servant into outer darkness ; there shall be weeping and gnashing of 
teeth "\\ 

4. In every question of conduct, where one side is doubtful, and the 
other side saie, we are bound to take the safe side. 

This is best explained by an instance * and I know of none more to 
our purpose than that of suicide. Suppose, for examples' sake, that it 



* -2 Pet. i. 6, 6, 7. f Cor. vi. 9, 10. i 1 Pet iv. 8. 

^ Jumes, V. 20. jl Matt. xxv. 24. &c. 



VIRTUE. 31 

appear doubtful to a reasoner upon the subject, whether he may law- 
fully destroy himself : he can have no doubt, that it is lawful for him 
to let it alone. Here therefore is a case, in which one side is doubtful, 
.and the other side safe. By virtue, therefore, of our rule, he is bound to 
pursue the safe side, that is, to forbear from offering violence to himself, 
whilst a doubt remains upon his mind concerning the lawfulness of 
suicide. 

It is prudent J you allow, to take the safe side. But our observation 
means something more. We assert that the action concerning which 
we doubt, whatever it may be in itself, or to another, would, in us, 
while this doubt remains upon our minds, be certainly sinful. The 
case is expressly so adjudged by St. Paul, with whose authority we 
will for the present rest contented. " I know, and am persuaded by the 
Lord Jesus, that there is nothing unclean of itself ] but to him that es- 
teemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean. Happy is he 
that condemneth not himself in that thing which he alloweth ; and he 
that doubteth is damned {condemned) if he eat, for whatsoever is not 
of faith {i. e. not done with a full persuasion of the lawfulness of it) 
is sin."* 

• Rom. xiv. 14, 22, 23. 



BOOK II, 

MORAL OBLIGATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE QUESTION, " WHY AM I OBLIGED TO KEEP MY WORD ?" 
CONSIDERED. 

Why am I obliged to keep my word ? 

Because it is right, says one. Because it is agreeable to the fitness oi 
things, says another. Because it is conformable to reason and nature, 
says a third. Because it is conformable to truth, says a fourth. Be- 
cause it promotes the public good, says a fifth. Because it is required 
by the will of God, concludes a sixth. 

Upon which different accounts iwo things are observable; 

First, that they all ultimately coincide. 

The fitnesa of things means their fitness to produce happiness : the 
nature of things means that actual constitution of the world, by which 
some things, as such and such actions, for example, produce happiness, 
and others misery : Reason is the principle by which we discover or 
judge of this constitution : truth is this judgment expressed or drawn 
out into propositions., So that it necessarily comes to pass, that what 
promotes the public happiness, or happiness on the whole, is agreeable 
to the fitness of things, to nature, to reason, and to truth : and such (as 
will appear by and by) is the divine character, that what promotes the 
general happiness is required by the will of God ; and vv^hat has all the 
above properties must needs he right; for right means no more than 
conformity to the rule we go by, whatever that rule be. 

And this is the reason that moralists from whatever different princi- 
ples they set out, commonly meet in their conclusions ', that is, they 
enjoin the same con'Juct, prescribe the same rules of duty, and, with a 
few exceptions, deliver upon dubious cases the same determinations. 

Secondly, It is to be obseiTed, that these answers all leave the 
matter short ; for the inquirer may turn round upon his teacher with a 
second question, in which he will expect to be satisfied, namely. Why 
am I obliged to do what is right : to act agreeably to the fitness of 
things; to conform to reason, nature, or truth; to promote the public 
good, or to obey the will of God ? 

The propsr method of conducting the inquiry is, first, to examine 
what we mecin when w^e say a man is obliged to do anything; and 



MORAL OBLIGATION. 33 

THEN to show why he is obliged to do the thing which we have pro- 
posed as an example, namely, " to keep his word." 



CHAPTER 11. 

WHAT Wis MEAN WHEN WE SAY A MAN IS " OBLIGED" TO DO A THING. 

A MAN is said to be obliged " when he is urged by a violent motive, 
resulting from the command of another.^'' 

First, " The motive must be violent." If a person, who has done 
me some little service, or has a small place in his disposal, ask me upon 
some occasion for my vote, I may possibly give it him from a motive of 
gratitude or expectation : but I should hardly say that I was obliged to 
give it him; because the inducement does not rise high enough. 
Whereas, if a father or a master, any great benefactor, or one on whom 
my fortune depends, require my vote, I give it him of course ; and my 
answer to all who ask me why I voted so and so is, that my father or 
my master obliged me ; that I had received so many favors from, or had 
so great a dependence upon such a one, that I was obliged to vote as he 
directed me. 

Secondly, *' It must result from the command of another." Offer a 
man a gratuity for doing any thing, for seizing, for example, an offen- 
der ; he is not obliged by your offer to do it, nor would he say he is ; 
though he may be induced^ persuaded, prevailed upon, tempted. If a 
magistrate or the man's immediate superior command it, he considers 
himself as obliged to comply, though possibly he would lose less by a 
refusal in this case than in the former. 

I will not undertake to say that the words obligation and obliged are 
used uniformly in this sense, or always with this distinction ; nor is it 
possible to tie down popular phrases to any constant signification : but 
wherever the motive is violent enough, and coupled with the idea of 
command, authority, law, or the will of a superior, there, I take it, we 
always reckon ourselves to be obliged. 

And from this account of obligation it follows, that we can he ohliged 
to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by ; for 
nothing else can be a " violent motive " to us. As we should not be 
00 iged to obey the laws of the magistrate, unless rewards or punish- 
ment, pleasure or pain, somehow or other, depended upon our obedience ; 
so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is 
ripfht, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of God. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE QUESTION " WHY AM I OBLIGED TO KEEP MY WORD ?" RESUMED. 

Let it be remembered, that to be obliged is " to be urged by a violent 
motive, resulting from the command of another." 

B 2 



34 MORAL OBLIGATION. 

And then let it be asked, Why am I obliged to keep my word ? and 
the answer will be, Because I am "urged to do so by a violent motive" 
(namely, the expectation of being after this life rewarded, if I do, or 
punished for it, if I do not,) " resulting fropa the command of another" 
(namely, of God.) 

This solution goes to ihe bottom of the subject, as no further ques- 
tion can reasonably be asked. 

Therefore, private happiness is our motive, and the will of God our 
rule. 

When I first turned my thoughts to moral speculations, an air of 
mystery seemed to hang over the whole subject * which arose, I believe, 
from hence, — that I supposed, with many authors whom I had read, 
that to be obliged to do a thing was very different from being induced 
only to do it ; and that the obligation to practise virtue, to do what is 
right, just, &c., was quite another thing, and of another kind, than the 
obligation which a soldier is under to obey his officer, a servant his 
master, or any of the civil and ordinary obligations of human life. 
Whereas from what has been said, it appears that moral obligation is 
like all other obligations ] and that obligation is nothing more than an 
inducement of sufficient strength, and resulting, in some way, from the 
command of another. 

There is always understood to be a difference between an act of 'pru- 
dence and an act of duty. Thus, if I distrusted a man who owed me a 
sum of money, I should reckon it an act of prudence to get another 
person bound with him ; but I should hardly call it an act of duty. On 
the other hand, it would be thought a very unusual and loose kind of 
language, to say, that, as I had made such a promise, it was prudent to 
perform it ; or that, as my friend, when he went abroad, placed a box 
of jewels in my hands, it would be prudent in me to preserve it for 
him till he returned. 

Now, in what, you will ask, does the difference consist ? inasmuch 
as, according to our account of the matter, both in the one case and the 
other, in acts of duty as well as acts of prudence, we consider solely 
what we ourselves shall gain or lose by the act. 

The difference, and the only difference, is this ] that, in the one case, 
we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world * in the 
other case, we consider also what we shall gain or lose in the world to 
come. 

They who would establish a system of morality, independent of a 
future state, must look out for some different idea of moral obligation • 
unless they can show that virtue conducts ^ie possessor to certain hap- 
piness in this life, or to a much greater share of it than he could attain 
by a different behavior. 

To us there are two great questions : 

1 . Will there be after this life any distribution of rewards and pun- 
ishments at all '? 

2. If there be, what actions will be rewarded, and what will be pun- 
ished ? 

The first question comprises the credibility of the Christian Religion 



WILL OF GOD. 35 



together with the presumptive proofs of a future retribution from the 
light of nature. The second question comprises the province of mo- 
rality. Both questions are too much for one work. The affirmative 
therefore of the first, although we confess that it is the foundation upon 
which the whole fabric rests, must in this treatise be taken for 
granted. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE WILL OF GOD. 

As the will of God is our rule ; to inquire what is our duty, or what 
we are obliged to do, in any instance, is, in eifect, to inquire what is 
the will of God in that instance ? which consequently becomes the 
whole business of morality. 

Now there are two methods of coming at the will of God on any 
point : 

1 . By his express declarations, when they are to be had, and which 
must be sought for in Scripture. 

2. By what we can discover of his designs and dispositions from his 
works; or, ^s we usually call it, the light of nature. 

And here we may observe the absurdity of separating natural and 
revealed religion from each other. The object of both is the same — to 
discover the will of God ; — and, provided we do but discover it, it mat- 
ters nothing by what means. 

An ambassador, judging by what he knows of his sovereign's dispo- 
sition, and arguing from what he has observed of his conduct, or is ac- 
quainted with of his designs, may take his measures in many cases 
with safety, and presume with great probability how his master would 
have him act on most occasions that arise : but if he have his commis- 
sion and instructions in his pocket, it would be strange not to look into 
them. He will be directed by both rules : when his instructions are 
clear and positive, there is an end to all further deliberation (unless in- 
deed he suspect their authenticity :) where his instructions are silent or 
dubious, he will endeavor to supply or explain them, by what he has 
been able to collect from other quarters of his master's general inclina- 
tion or intentions. 

Mr. Hume, in his fourth Appendix to his Principles of Morals, has 
been pleased to complain of the modern scheme of uniting Ethics with 
the Christian Theology. They who find themselves disposed to join in 
this complaint will do well to observe what Mr. Hume himself has 
been able to make of morality without this union. And for that pur- 
pose let them read the second part of the ninth section of the above 
essay 3 which part contains the practical application of the whole 
treatise, — a treatise which Mr. Hume declares to be " incomparably 
the best he ever wrote." When they have read it over, let them con- 
sider, whether any motives there proposed are likely to be found suffi- 
cient to withhold men from the gratification of lust, revenge, envy, am- 



3f) DIVINE BENEVOLENCE. 

bitictti, avarice ; or to prevent the existence of these passions. Unless 
liiey rise up from this celebrated essay with stronger impressions upon 
their minds than it ever left upon mine, they will acknowledge the ne- 
cessity of additional sanctions. But the necessity of these sanc- 
tions is not now the question. If they be in fact established, 
if the rewards and punishments held forth in the Gospel will 
actually come to pass, they must be considered. Such as reject 
the Christian religion are to make the best shift they can to build up a 
system, and lay the foundation of morality, without it. But it appears 
to me a great inconsistency in those who receive Christianity, and ex- 
pect something to come of it, to endeavor to keep all such expectations 
out of sight in their reasonings concerning human duty. 

The method of coming at the will of God, concerning any action, by 
the light of nature, is to inqi *re into '^ the tendency of the action to pro- 
mote or diminish the general happiness." This rule proceeds upon the 
presumption, that God Almighty wills and wishes the happiness of his 
creatures ; and, consequently, that those actions which promote that 
will and wish must be agreeable to him ; and the contrary. 

As this presumption is the foundation of our whole system, it be- 
comes necessary to explain the reasons upon which it rests. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE DIVINE BENEVOLENCE. 

When God created the human species, either he wished their happi- 
ness, or he wished their misery, or he was indifferent and unconcerned 
about both. 

If he had wished our misery, he might have made sure of his pur- 
pose, by forming our senses to be so many sores and pains to us, as 
they are now instruments of gratification and enjoyment : or by placing 
us amidst objects so ill suited to our perceptions, as to have continually 
offended us, instead of ministering to our refreshment and delight. He 
might have made, for example, every thing we tasted bitter ; every 
thing we saw loathsome ; every thing we touched a sting • every smell 
a stench • and every sound a discord. 

If he had been indifferent about our happiness or misery, we must 
imp'ite to our good fortune (as all design bv this supposition is exclu- 
ded) both the capacity of our senses to receive pleasure, and the supply 
of external objects fitted to produce it. But either of these (and still 
more both of them) being too much to be attributed to accident, nothing 
remains but the first supposition, that God, when he created the human 
species, wished their happiness; and made for them the provision 
which he has made, wuth that view, and for that purpose. 

The same argument may be proposed in different terms, thus : Con- 
trivance proves design ; and the predominant tendency of the contri- 
vance indicates the disposition of the designer. The world abounds 
with contriyances ; and all the contrivances which we are acquainted 



DIVINE BENEVOLENCE. 37 

with are directed to Leneficial purposes. Evil, no doubt, exists ; but is 
never, that we can perceive, the object of contrivance. Teeth are con- 
trived to eat, not to ache j their aching now and then is incidental to the 
contrivance, perhaps inseparable from it ] or even, if you will, let it be 
called a defect in the contrivance ] but it is not the object of it. This is 
a distinction which well deserves to be attended to. Iij describing im- 
plements of husbandry, you would hardly say of the sickle, that it is 
made to cut the reaper's fingers, though, from the construction of the 
instrument, and the manner of using it, this mischief often happens. 
But if you had occasion to describe instruments of torture or execution. 
This engine, you would say, is to extend the sinews ] this to dislocate 
the joints ; this to break the bones ; this to scorch the soles of the feet. 
Here pain and misery are the very objects of the contrivance. Now, 
nothing of this sort is to be found in the works of nature. We never 
discover a train of contrivance to bring about an evil purpose. No 
anatomist ever discovered a system of organization calculated to pro- 
duce pain and disease ] or, in explaining the parts of the human body, 
ever said, This is to irritate ; this to inflame ; this duct is to convey the 
gravel to the kidneys ] this gland to secrete the humor which forms the 
gout : ii by chance he come at a part of which he knows not the use, 
the most he can say is, that it is useless ] no one ever suspects that it is 
put there to incommode, to annoy, or to torment. Since then God hath 
called forth his consummate wisdom to contrive and provide for our 
happiness, and the world appears to have been constituted with this de- 
sign at first ] so long as this constitution is upholden by him, we must 
in reason suppose the same design to continue. 

The contemplation of universal nature rather bewilders the mind than 
affects it. There is always a bright spot in the prospect, upon which 
the eye rests : a single example, perhaps, by which each man finds 
himself more convinced than by all others put together. I seem, for my 
own part, to see the benevolence of the Deity more clearly in the plea- 
sures of very young children, than in any thing in the world. The 
pleasures of grown persons may be reckoned partly of their own pro- 
curing ] especially if there has been any industry or contrivance or 
pursuit to come at them ; or if they are founded, like music, painting, 
&c., upon any qualification of their own acquiring. But the pleasures 
of a healthy infant are so manifestly provided for it by another^ and the 
benevolence of the provision is so unquestionable that every child I see 
at its sport affords to my mind a kind of sensible evidence of the finger 
of God, and of the disposition which directs it. 

But the example which strides each man most strongly is the true 
example for him : and hardly two minds hit upon the same ] which 
shows the abundance of such examples about us. 

We conclude, therefore, that God wills and wishes the happiness of 
his creatures. And this conclusion being once established, we are at 
liberty to go on with the rule built upon it, namely, " that the method 
of coming at the will of God concerning any action, by the light of na- 
ture, is to inquire into the tendency of that action to promote or diminish 
the general happiness." 



58 UTILITY. 

CHAPTER VI. 

UTILITY. 

So then actions are to be estimated by their tendency.* Whatev6i 
is expedient is right. It is the utility of any moral rule alone, which 
constitutes the obligation of it. 

But to all this there seems a plain objection, viz. that many actions 
are useful, which no man in his senses will allow to be right. There 
are occasions in which the hand of the assassin would be very useful. 
The present possessor of some great estate employs his influence and 
fortune, to annoy, corrupt, or oppress all about him. His estate would 
devolve, by his death, to a successor of an opposite character. It is 
useful, therefore, to despatch such a one as soon as possible out of the 
way J as the neighborhood will exchange thereby a pernicious tyrant 
for a wise and generous benefactor. It might be useful to rob a miser, 
and give the money to the poor ; as the money, no doubt, would pro- 
duce more happiness by being laid out in food and clothing for half a 
dozen distressed families, than by continuing locked up in a miser's 
chest. It may be useful to get possession of a place, a piece of prefer- 
ment, or of a seat in Parliament, by bribery or false swearing : as by 
means of them we may serve the public more effectually than in our 
private station. What then shall we say '? Must we admit these ac- 
tions to be right, which would be to justify assassination, plunder, and 
perjury 5 or must we give up our principle, that the criterion of right is 
utility? 

It is not necessary to do either. 

The true answer is this ; that these actions, after all, are not useful, 
and for that reason, and that alone, are not right. 

To see this point perfectly, it must be observed, that the bad conse- 
quences of actions are twofold, particular and general. 

The particular bad consequences of an action is the mischief which 
that single action directly and immediately occasions. 

The general bad consequence is the violation of some necessary or 
useful general rule. 

Thus, the particular bad consequence of the assassination above de- 
scribed is the fright and pain which the deceased underwent i the loss 
he suffered of life, which is as valuable to a bad man as to a good one, 
or more so ; the prejudice and affliction of which his death was the oc- 
casion, to his family, friends, and dependants. 

The general bad consequence is the violation of this necessary gene- 



* Actions in the abstract are right or wrong, according to their tendency ; the agent 
is virtuous or vicious, according to his design. Thus, if the question be, Whether 
relieving common beggars be right or wrong ? we inquire into the tendency of such 
a conduct to the public advantage or inconvexiience. If the question be, Whether a 
man remarkable for this sort of bounty is to be esteemed virtuous for that reason ? 
we inquire into his design, whether hia liberality sprang from charity or from osten- 
tation ? It is evident that our concern is with actions in the abstract. 



NECESSITY OF GENERAL RULES. 39 

ral rule, that no man be put to death for his crimes but by public au- 
thority. 

Ahhough, therefore, such an action have no particular bad conse- 
quences, or greater particular good consequences, yet it is not useful, 
by reason of the general consequence, which is of more importance, 
a ad which is evil. And the same of the other two instances, and of a 
million more which might be mentioned. 

But as this solution supposes that the moral government of the world 
must proceed by general rules, it remains that we show the necessity 
of this. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE NECESSITY OF GENERAL RULES. 

You cannot permit one action and forbid another without showing a 
lifFerence between them. Consequently, the same sort of actions must 
be generally permitted or generally forbidden. Where, therefore, the 
general permission of them would be pernicious, it becomes necessary 
to lay down and support the rule which generally forbids them. 

Thus, to return once more to the case of the assassin. The assassin 
knocked the rich villain on the head, because he thought him better out 
of the way than in it. If you allow this excuse in the present instance, 
you must allow it to all who act in the same manner and from the same 
motive : that is, you must allow every man to kill any one he meets 
whom he thinks noxious or useless ; which, in the event, would be to 
commit every man's life and safety to the spleen, fury, and fanaticism 
of his neighbor 3 a disposition of affairs which would soon fill the 
world with misery and confusion ; and ere long put an end to human 
society, if not to the human species. 

The necessity of general rules in human government is apparent : 
but whether the same necessity subsists in the Divine economy, in that 
distribution of rewards and punishments, to which a moralist looks for- 
ward, may be doubted. 

I answer, that general rules are necessary to every moral govern- 
ment : and by moral government I mean any dispensation whose ob- 
ject is to influence the conduct of reasonable creatures. 

For if, of two actions perfectly similar, one be punished, and the other 
be rewarded or forgiven, which is the consequence of rejecting general 
rules, the subjects of such a dispensation would no longer know either 
what to expect or how to act. Rewards and punishments would cease 
to be such — would become accidents. Like the stroke of a thunder- ^ 
bolt, or the discovery of a mine, like a blank or a benefit ticket in a 
lottery, they would occasion pain or pleasure when they happened 5 
but, following in no known order, from any particular course of action, 
they could have no previous influence or effect upon the conduct. 

An attention to general rules, therefore, is included in the very idea 
of reward and punishment. Consequently, whatever reason tliere is to 



40 • GENERAL CONSEQUENCES. 

expect future reward and punishment at the hand of God, there is the 
same reason to believe that he will proceed in the distribution of it by 
general rules. 



Before we prosecute the consideration of general consequences any 
farther, it may be proper to anticipate a reflection, which will be apt 
enough to suggest itself in the progress of our argument. 

As the general consequence of an action, upon which so much of the 
guilt of a bad action depends, consists in the example ; it should seem 
that if the action be done with perfect secrecy, so as to furnish no bad 
example, that part of the guilt drops off. In the case of suicide, for in- 
stance, if a man can so manage matters, as to take away his own life 
without being known or suspected to have done so, he is not chargeable 
with any mischief from the example* nor does his punishment seem 
necessary in order to save the authority of any general rule. 

In the first place, those who reason in this manner do not observe that 
they are setting up a general rule, of all others the least to be endured * 
namely, that secrecy, whenever secrecy is practicable, will justify any 
action. 

Were such a rule admitted, for instance in the case above produced ] 
is there not reason to fear that people would be disappearing perpetu- 
ally? 

In the next place, I would wish them to be well satisfied about the 
points proposed in the following queries : 

1. Whether the Scriptures do not teach us to expect that, at the gene- 
ral judgment of the world, the most secret actions will be brought to 
light ?* 

2. For what purpose can this be, but to make them the objects of 
reward and punishment ? 

3. Whether, being so brought to light, they will not fall under the 
operation of those equal and impartial rules, by which God will deal 
with his creatures '? 

They will then become examples, whatever they be now ] and re- 
quire the same treatment from the judge and governor of the moral 
world, as if they had been detected from the first. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE CONSIDERATION OF GENERAL CONSEQUENCES PURSUED. 

The general consequence of any action may be estimated, by asking 
what would be the consequence, if the same sort of actions were gene- 



• " In the day when God shall judge the 55ecrets of men by Jesus Christ." Rom. 
xi. 19.—" Judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who will bring to light 
the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the heart." I 
Cor. iv, 5. 



GENERAL CONSEQUENCES. 41 

rally permitted. But suppose they were, and a thousand such actions 
perpetrated under this permission ; is it just to charge a single action 
with the collected guilt and mischief of the whole thousand'? I an- 
swer, that the reason for prohibiting and punishing an action (and this 
reason may be called the guilt of the action, if you please) will always 
be in proportion to the whole mischief that would arise from the gene- 
ral impunity and toleration of actions of the same sort. 

" Whatever is expedient is right." But then it must be expedient on 
the whole, at the long run, in all its effects, collateral and remote, as 
well as in those which are immediate and direct ; as it is obvious, that, 
in computing consequences, it makes no difference in what way or at 
what distance they ensue. 

To impress this doctrine on the minds of young readers, and to teach 
them to extend their views beyond the immediate mischief of a crime, I 
shall here subjoin a string of instances, in which the particular conse- 
quence is comparatively insignificant* and where the malignity of 
the crime, and the severity with which human laws pursue it, is almost 
entirely founded upon the general consequence. 

The particular consequence of coining is the loss of a guinea or of 
half a guinea, to the person who receives the counterfeit money : the 
general consequence (by which I mean the consequence that would en- 
sue, if the' same practice were generally permitted) is to abolish the use 
of money. 

The particular consequence of forgery is a dam^age of twenty or thir- 
ty pounds to the man who accepts the forged bill : the general conse- 
quence is the stoppage of paper currency. 

Tiie particular consequence of sheep-stealing or horse-stealing is a 
loss to the owner, to the amount of the value of the sheep or horse 
stolen : the general consequence is, that the land could not be occupied, 
nor the market supplied with this kind of stock. 

The particular consequence of breaking into a house empty of inha- 
bitants, is the loss of a pair of silver candlesticks or a few spoons : the 
general consequence is, that nobody could leave their house empty. 

The particular consequence of smuggling may be a deduction from 
the national fund too minute for computation ; the general consequence 
is, the destruction of one entire branch of public revenue ; a proportion- 
able increase of the burden upon other branches 3 and the ruin of all 
fair and open trade in the article smuggled. 

The particular consequence of an officer's breaking his parole is, the 
loss of a prisoner, who was possibly not worth keeping : the general 
consequence is, that this mitigation of captivity would be refused to all 
others. 

And what proves incontestably the superior importance of general 
consequences is, that crimes are the same, and treated in the same man- 
ner, though the particular consequence be very different. The crime 
and fate of the house-breaker are the same, whether his booty be five 
pounds or fifty, and the reason is that the general consequence is the 
same. 

The want of this distinction between particular and general conse-- 



42 OF RIGHT. 

quences, or rather, the not sufficiently attending to the latter, is the 
cause of that j/erplexity which we meet with in ancient moralists. On 
the one hand, they were sensible of the absurdity of pronouncing ac- 
tions good or evil, without regard to the good or evil they produced. 
On the other hand, they were startled at the conclusion to which a 
steady adherence to consequences seemed sometimes to conduct them. 
To relieve this difficulty they contrived the to Trpenov, or the honestum., 
by which terms they meant to constitute a measure of right, distinct 
from utility. While the utile served them, that is, while it correspond- 
ed with their habitual notions of the rectitude of actions, they went by 
it. When they fell in with such cases as those mentioned in the sixth 
chapter, they took leave of their guide, and resorted to the honestum. 
The only account they could give of the matter was, that these actions 
might be useful ; but, because they were not at the same time honesta, 
they were by no means to be deemed just or right. 

From the principles delivered in this and the two preceding chapters, a 
maxim may be explained, which is in every man's mouth, and in most 
men's without meaning, viz., " not to do evil, that good may come ;" 
that is, let us not violate a general rule for the sake of any particular 
good consequence we may expect : which is for the most part a salu- 
tary caution, the advantage seldom compensating for the violation of 
the rule. Strictly speaking, that cannot be " evil " from which " good 
comes •" but in this way, and with a view to the distinction between 
particular and general consequences, it may. 

We will conclude this subject of consequences with the following re- 
flection. A man may imagine that any action of his, with respect to 
the public, must be inconsiderable : so also is the agent. If his crime 
produce but a small effect upon the universal interest, his punishment 
or destruction bears a small proportion to the sum of happiness and 
misery in the creation. 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF RIGHT. 

Right and obligation are reciprocal ; that is, wherever there is a 
right in one person, there is a corresponding obligation upon others. If 
one man has a '* right " to an estate * others are " obliged" to abstain 
from it : — If parents have a " right " to reverence from their children ; 
children are " obliged " to reverence their parents • — and so in all other 
instances. 

Now, because moral obligation depends as we have seen, upon the 
will of God ; right, which is correlative to it, must depend upon the 
same. Right therefore signifies consistency with the vjill of God. 

But if the divine will determine the distinction of right and wrong, 
what else is it but an identical proposition, to say of God, that he acts 
right 7 or how is it possible to conceive even that he should ajct wrong 7 



DIVISION OF RIGHTS. 43 

Yet these assertions are intelligible and significant. The case is this : 
By virtue of the two principles, that God wiUs the happiness of his 
creatures, and that the will of God is the measure of right and wrong, 
we arrive at certain conclusions ] which conclusions become rules : 
and we soon learn to pronounce actions right or wrong, according as 
they agree or disagree with our rules, without looking any farther, and 
when the habit is once established of stopping at the rules, we can go 
back and compare with these rules even the Divine conduct itself, and 
yet it may be true (only not observed by us at the time) that the rules 
themselves are deduced from the Divine will. 

Right is a quality of persons or of actions. 

Of persons; as when we say, such a one has a " right" to this es- 
tate ] parents have a " right " to reverence from their children ] the king 
to allegiance from his subjects • masters have a "right" to their ser- 
vants' labor ] a man has not a " right " over his own life. 

Of actions ] as in such expressions as the following : it is "right" 
to punish murder with death • his behavior on that occasion was 
" right;" it is not " right " to send an unfortunate debtor to jail ) he did 
or acted " right " who gave up his place, rather than vote against his 
judgment. 

In this latter set of expressions, you may substitute the definition of 
right above given for the term itself; e. g. it is "consistent with the 
will of God " to punish murder with death ; — his behavior on that oc- 
casion was " consistent with the will of God ;" — it is not " consistent 
with the will of God " to send an unfortunate debtor to jail ; he did, or 
acted, " consistently with the will of GoJ,-' who gave up his place ra- 
ther than vote against his judgment. 

In the former set, you must vary the construction a little, when you 
introduce the definition instead of the term. Such a one has a " right" 
to this estate ; that is, it is " consistent with the will of God " that such 
a one should have it ; — parents have a " right" to reverence from their 
children ; that is, it is " consistent with the will of God" that children 
should reverence their parents ; — and the same of the rest. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE DIVISION OF RIGHTS. 

Rights, when applied to persons, are 
Natural or adventitious : 
Alienable or unalienable : 
Perfect or imperfect. 
1 . Rights are natural or adventitious. 

Natural rights are such as would belong to man, although there sub- 
sisted in the world no civil government whatever. 
Adventitious rights are such as would not. 
Natural -rights are a man's right to his hfe, limbs, and liberty; hig 



44 DIVISION OF RIGHTS. 

right to the produce of his personal labor; to the use, in common with 
others, of air, light, water. If a thousand different persons, from a 
thousand different corners of the world, were cast together upon a de- 
sert island, they would from the first be every one entitled to these 
rights. 

Adventitious rights are the right of a king over his subjects ; of a 
general over his soldiers ; of a judge over the life and liberty of a 
prisoner • a right to elect or appoint magistrates, to impose taxes, de- 
cide disputes, direct the descent or disposition of property ; a right, in a 
word, in any one man, or particular body of men, to make laws and 
regulations for the rest. For none of these rights would exist in the 
newly inhabited island. 

And here it will be asked, how adventitious rights are created 1 or, 
which is the same thing, how any new rights can accrue from the es- 
tablishment of civil society ? as rights of all kinds, we remember, de- 
pend upon the will of God, and civil society is but the ordinance and 
institution of man. For the solution of this difficulty, we must return 
to our first principles. 

God wills the happiness of mankind ] and the existence of civil so- 
ciety, as conducive to that happiness. Consequently, many things, 
which are useful for the support of civil society in general, or for the 
conduct and conservation of particular societies already established, are, 
for that reason, " consistent with the will of God," or " right," which, 
without that reason, i. e. without the establishment of civil society, 
would not have been so. 

From whence also it appears, that adventitious rights, though imme- 
diately derived from human appoiiiiment, are not, for that reason, less 
sacred than natural rights, nor the obligation to respect them less cogent. 
They both ultimately rely upon the same authority — the will of God. 
Such a man claims a right to a particular estate. He can show, it is 
ti'ue, nothing for his right, but a rule of the civil communit}^ to which 
he belongs ] and this rule may be arbitrary, capriciouSj and absurd. 
Notwithstanding all this, there' would be the same sin in dispossessing 
the man of his estate by craft or violence, as if it had been assigned to 
him, like the partition of the country among the twelve tribes, by the 
immediate designation and appointment of Heaven. 

2. Rights are alienable or unalienable. 

Which terms explain themselves. 

The right we have to most of those things which we call property, 
as houses, lands, money, &c., is alienable. 

The right of a prince over his people, of a husband over his wife, of 
a master over his servant, is generally and naturally unalienable. 

The distinction depends upon the mode of acquiring the right. If the 
right originate from a contract, and be limited to the person by the ex- 
press terms of the contract, or by the common interpretations of such 
contracts (which is equivalent to an express stipulation,) or by a per- 
sonal condition annexed to the right; then it is unalienable. In all 
other cases it is alienable. 

The right to civil liberty is alienable; though in the vehemence of 



DIVISION OF RIGHTS. 45 

men's zeal for it, and the language of some political remonstrances, it 
has often been pronounced to be an unalienable right. The true reason 
why mankind hold in detestation the memory of those who have sold 
their liberty to a tyrant is, that, together with their own, they sold com- 
monly, or endangered, the liberty of others 3 which certainly they had 
no right to dispose of. 

3. Rights are perfect or imperfect. 

Perfect rights may be asserted by force, or, what in civil society comes 
into the place of private force, by course of law. 

Imperfect rights may not. 

Examples of perfect rights. — A man's right to his life, person, house , 
for, if these be attacked, he may repel the attack by instant violence, or 
punish the aggressor by law ; a man's right to his estate, furniture, 
clothes, money, and to all ordinary articles of property ; for, if they be 
injuriously taken from him, he may compel the author of the injury to 
make restitution or satisfaction. 

Examples of imperfect rights. — In elections or appointments to offi- 
ces, where the qualifications are prescribed, the best qualified candidate 
nas a right to success ; yet, if he be rejected, he has no remedy. He 
can neither seize the office by force, nor obtain redress at law : his right 
therefore is imperfect. A poor neighbor has a right to relief ] yet if it 
be refused him, he must not extort it. A benefactor has a right to re- 
turns of gratitude from the person he has obliged ; yet, if he meet with 
none, he must acquiesce. Children have a right to affection and educa- 
tion from their parents ; and parents, on their part, to duty and reve- 
rence from their children : yet if these rights be on either side with- 
holden. there is no compulsion by which they can be enforced. 

It may be at first view difficult to apprehend how a person should 
have a right to a thing, and yet have no right to use the means neces- 
sary to obtain it. This difficulty, like most others in morality, is re- 
solvable into the necessity of general rules. The reader recollects, that 
a person is said to have a -'right" to a thing, when it is " consistent 
with the will of God " that he should possess it. So that the question 
is reduced to this : How it comes to pass that it should be consistent 
with the will of God that a person should possess a thing, and yet not 
be consistent with the same will that he should use force to obtain it '^ 

The answer is, that by reason of the indeterminateness, either of the 
object, or of the circumstances of the right, the permission of force in 
this case would, in its consequence, lead to the permission of force in 
other cases, where there existed no right at all. The candidate above 
described has, no doubt, a right to success ] but his right depends upon 
his qualifications, for instance, upon his comparative virtue, learning, 
&c. \ there must be somebody therefore to compare them. The exis- 
tence, degree, and respective importance of these qualifications are aU 
indeteiminate : there must be somebody therefore to determine them. 
To allow the candidate to demand success by force is to make him the 
judge of his own qualifications. You cannot do this but you must make 
all other candidates the same ] which would open a door to demands 
without number, reason, or right. In like manner, a poor man has a 



46 GENERAL RIGHTS OF MANKIND. 

right to relief from the rich ] but the mode, season, and quantum of that 
relief, who shall contribute to it, or how much, are not ascertained. 
Yet these points must be ascertained, before a claim to relief can be 
prosecuted by force. For, to allow the poor to ascertain them for them- 
selves, would be to expose property to so many of these claims, that it 
would lose its value, or rather its nature ] that is, cease indeed to be 
property. The same observation holds of all other cases of imperfect 
rights ] not to mention that, in the instances of gratitude, affection, re» 
verence, and the like, force is excluded by the very idea of the duty, 
which must be voluntary, or cannot exist at all. 

Wherever the right is imperfect, the corresponding obligation is so 
too. I am obliged to prefer the best candidate, to relieve the poor, be 
grateful to my benefactors, take care of my children, and reverence my 
parents ; but in all these cases my obligation, like their right, is im- 
perfect. 

I call these obligations " imperfect," in conformity to the established 
language of writers upon the subject. The term, however, seems ill 
chosen, on this account, that it leads many to imagine that there is less 
guilt in the violation of an imperfect obligation than of a perfect one ] 
which is a groundless notion. For an obligation being perfect or im- 
perfect, determines only whether violence may or may not be employed 
to enforce it ] and determines nothing else. The degree of guilt in- 
curred by violating the obligation is a different thing, and is determmed 
by circumstances altogether independent of this distinction. A man 
who, by a partial, prejudiced, or corrupt vote, disappoints a worthy can- 
didate of a station in life, upon which his hopes possibly, or livelihood, 
depended, and who thereby grievously discourages merit and emulation 
in others, commits, I am persuaded, a much greater crime than if he 
filched a book out of a library, or picked a pocket of a handkerchief; 
though in the one case he violates only an imperfect right, in the other 
a perfect one. 

As positive precepts are often indeterminate in their extent, and as the 
indeterminateness of an obligation is that which makes it imperfect, it 
comes to pass, that positive precepts commonly produce an imperfect 
obligation. 

Negative precepts or prohibitions, being generally precise, constitute 
accordingly perfect obligations. 

The fifth commandment is positive, and the duty which results from 
it is imperfect. 

The sixth commandment is negative, and imposes a perfect obligation. 

Religion and virtue find their principal exercise among the imperfect 
obhgations ] the laws of civil society taking pretty good care of the rest 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE GENERAL RIGHTS OF MANKIND. 

By the Genejal Rights of Mankind, I mean the rights which belong 



GENERAL RIGHTS OF MANKIND. 47 

to the species collectively ] the original stock, as 1 may say, which they 
have since distributed among themselves. 
These are, 

1. A right to the fruits or vegetable produce of the earth. 

The insensible parts of the creation are incapable of injury ; and it 
IS nugatory to inquire into the right, where the use can be attended with 
no injury. But it may be worth observing, for the sake of an inference 
which will appear below, that as God had created us with a want and 
desire of food, and provided things suited by their nature to sustain and 
satisfy us, we may fairly presume, that he intended we should apply 
these things to that purpose. 

2. A right to the flesh of animals. 

This is a very diiFerent claim from the former. Some excuse seems 
necessary for the pain and loss which we occasion to brutes, by restrain- 
ing them of their hberty, mutilating their bodies, and, at last, putting an 
end to their lives (which we suppose to be the whole of their existence) 
for our pleasure or conveniency. 

The reasons alleged in vindication of this practice are the following : 
that the several species of brutes being created to prey upon one an- 
other, affords a kind of analogy to prove that the human species were 
intended to feed upon them • that, if let alone, they would overrun the 
earth, and exclude mankind from the occupation of it ; that they are 
requited for what they suffer at our hands, by our care and protection. 

Upon which reasons I would observe, that the analogy contended for 
is extremely lame ] since brutes have no power to support life by any 
other means, and since we have ; for the whole human species might 
subsist entirely upon fruit, pulse, herbs, and roots, as many tribes of 
Hindoos actually do. The tw^o other reasons may be valid reasons, as 
far as they go 3 for, no doubt, if man had been supported entirely by 
vegetable tood, a great part of those animals which die to furnish his 
table would never have lived : but they by no means justify our right 
over the Uves of brutes to the extent in which we exercise it. What 
danger is there, for instance, of fish interfering with us, in the occupa- 
tion of their element 1 or what do we contribute to their support or pre- 
servation ? 

It seems to me, that it would be difficult to defend this right by any 
arguments which the light and order of nature a^ord ; and that we are 
beholden for it to the permission recorded in Scripture, Gen. Lx. 1, 2, 3. 
*' And God blessed Noah and his sons, and said unto them, Be fruitful 
and multiply, and replenish the earth : and the fear of you, and the 
dread of you, shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon ever>' 
fowl of the air, and upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all 
the fishes of the sea ] into your hand are they delivered ] every moving 
thing shall be meat for you ] even as the green herb, have I given you 
all things." To Adam and his posterity had been granted, at the crea- 
tion, " every green herb for meat,*' and nothing more. In the last 
clause of the passage now produced, the old grant is recited, and ex- 
tended to the flesh of animals ; " even as the green herb, have I given 
you aU things." But this was not tiQ after the flood ; the inhabitants 



48 GENERAL RIGHTS OF MANKIND. 

of the antediluvian world had therefore no such permission, that we 
know of. Whether they actually refrained from the flesh of animals, 
is another question. Abel, we read, was a keeper of sheep ; and for 
what purpose he kept them, except for food, is difficult to say (unless 
it were sacrifices:) might not, however, some of the stricter sects among 
the antediluvians be scrupulous as to this point ? and might not Noa.h 
and his family be of this description ? for it is not probable that God 
would publish a permission to authorize a practice which had never 
been disputed. 

Wanton, and, what is worse, studied cruelty to brutes is certainly 
wrong, as coming within none of these reasons. 



From reason, then, or revelation, or from both together, it appears to 
be God Almighty's intention, that the productions of the earth should 
be applied to the sustentation of human life. Consequently, all waste 
and misapplication of these productions is contrary to the Divine inten- 
tion and will ] and therefore wrong, for the same reason that any other 
crime is so ] such as, what is related of William the Conqueror, the 
converting of twenty manors into a forest for hunting ] or, which is 
not much better, suffering them to continue in that state ] or, the letting 
of large tracts of land lie barren, because the owner cannot cultivate 
them, nor will part with them to those who can ) or destroying, or suf- 
fering to perish, great part of an article of human provision, in order to 
enhance the price of the remainder (which is said to have been, till 
lately, the case with fish caught upon the English coast •) or diminish- 
ing the breed of animals, by a wanton or improvident consumption of 
the 5^oung, as of the spawn of shellfish, or the fry of salmon, by the 
use of unlawful nets, or at improper seasons. To this head may also 
be referred what is the same evil in a smaller way, the expending of 
liuman food on superfluous dogs or horses ; and lastly, the reducing of 
ihe quantity, in order to alter the quality, and to alter it generally for 
the worse : as the distillation of spirits from bread corn, the boiling 
down of solid meat for sauces, essences, &c. 

This seems to be the lesson which our Savior, after his manner, in- 
culcates, when he bids his disciples " gather up the fragments, that no- 
thing be lost." And it opens indeed a new field of duty. Schemes ot 
wealth or profit prompt the active part of mankind to cast about, how 
they may convert their property to the most advantage ; and their own 
advantage, and that of the public, commonly concur. But it has not as 
yet entered into the minds of mankind to reflect, that it is a duty to add 
what we can to the common stock of provision, by extracting out of 
our estates the most they will yield ', or that it is any sin to neglect 
this. 

From the same intention of God Almighty, we also deduce another 
conclusion, namely, " that nothing ought to be made exclusive proper- 
ty which can be conveniently enjoyed in common." 

It is the general intention of God Almighty, that the produce of the 



GENERAL RIGHTS OF MANKIND. 49 

earth be applied to the use of man. This appears from the constitution 
of nature, or, if you will, from his express declaration * and this is all 
that appears at first. Under this general donation, one man has the 
same right as another. You pluck an apple from a tree, or take a lamb 
from a ilock, for your immediate use and nourishment, and I do the 
same ] and we both plead for what we do, the general intention of the 
Supreme Proprietor. So far all is right : but you cannot claim the 
whole tree, or the whole flock, and exclude me from any share of them, 
and plead this general intention for what you do. The plea will not 
serve you ; you must show something more. You must show, by pro- 
bable arguments, at least, that it • is God's intention that these things 
should be parcelled out to individuals; and that the established distri-- 
bution, under which you daim, should be upholden. Show me this, 
and I am satisfied. But, until this be shown, the general intention, 
which has been made to appear and which is all that does appear, 
must prevail 3 and, under that, my title is as good as yours. Now 
there is no argument to induce such a presumption, but one ; that the 
thing cannot be enjoyed at all, or enjoyed with the same, or with near- 
ly the same advantage, while it continues in common as when appro- 
priated. This is true, where there is not enough for all, or where the 
article in question requires care or labor in the production or preserva- 
tion ; but where no such reason obtains, and the thing is in its nature 
capable of being enjoyed by as many as will, it seems an arbitrary 
tisurpation upon the rights of mankind, to confine the use of it to any. 

If a medicinal spring were discovered in a piece of ground which was 
private property, copious enough for every purpose to which it could 
be applied, I would award a compensation to the owner of the field, 
and a liberal profit to the author of the discovery, especially if he had 
bestowed pains or expense upon the seafth ; but I question whether 
any human laws would be justified, or would justify the cwner, in pro- 
hibiting mankind from the use of the water, or setting such a price upon 
't as would almost amount to a prohibition. 

If there be fisheries which are inexhaustible, as the cod fishery upon 
the Banks of Newfoundland, and the herring fishery in the British 
Seas, are said to be ; then all those conventions, by which one or two 
nations claim to themselves, and guaranty to each other, the exclusive 
enjoyment of these fisheries, are so many encroachments upon the ge- 
neral rights of mankind. 

Upon the same principle may be determined a question, which makes 
a great figure in books of natural law, utrurriy mare sit liherum 7 that 
is, as I understand it, whether the exclusive right of navigating par- 
ticular seas, or a control of the navigation of these seas, can be claimed, 
consistently with the law of nature, by any nation ? What is neces- 
sary for each nation's safety, we allow ] as their own bays, creeks, and 
harbors, the sea contiguous to, that is, within cannon-shot, or three 
leagues of their coast ; and upon this principle of safety (if upon any 
principle) must be defended the claim of the Venetian State to the Adri- 
atic, ot Denmark to the Baltic Sea, and of Great Britain to the seas 
which invest the island. But when Spain asserts a right to the Pacific 
C 



50 GENERAL RIGHTS OF MANKIND. 

Ocean, or Portugal to the Indian Seas, or when any nation extends its 
pretensions much beyond the limits of its own territories, tliey erect a 
claim which interferes with the benevolent designs of Providence, and 
which no human authority can justify. 

3. Another right, which may be called a general right, as it is inci- 
dental to every man who is in a situation to claim it, is the right of ex- 
treme necessity ; by which is meant, a right to use or destroy another's 
property, when it is necessary for our own preservation to do so 3 as a 
right to take, without or against the owner's leave, the first food, 
clothes, or shelter we meet with, when we are in danger of perishing 
through w^ant of them ', a right to throw goods overboard, to save the 
ship ; or to pull down a house, in order to stop the progress of a fire ; 
and a few other instances of the same kind. Of which right the foun- 
dation seems to be this : that when property was first instituted, the in- 
stitution was not intended to operate to the destruction of any ; there- 
fore when such consequences would follow, all regard to it is super- 
seded. Or, rather, perhaps, these are the few cases, where the particu* 
lar consequence exceeds the general consequence * where the remote 
mischief resulting from the violation of the general rule is overbalanced 
by the immediate advantage. 

Restitution, however, is due, when in our power ; because the laws 
of property are to be adhered to, so far as consists with safety ; and 
because restitution, which is one of those laws, supposes the danger to 
be over. But what is to be restored ? Not the full value of the pro- 
perty destroyed, but what it was worth at the time of destroying it ; 
which, considering the danger it was in of perishing, might be vaj> 
little. 



BOOK III. 

RELATIVE DUTIES. 



PART L 

OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH ARE DETERMINATE. 

CHAPTER I. 

OF PROPERTY. 

If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of com ; and if (in- 
stead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as 
it wanted, and no more) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering 
all they got into a heap ] reserving nothing for themselves but the chaff 
and the refuse ; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, per- 
haps worst, pigeon of the flock ] sitting round, and looking on, all the 
winter, while this one was devouring, throwing about, and wasting it ; 
and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched a grain 
of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it, and tearing it to 
pieces ; — if you should see this, you would see nothing more than what 
is every day practised and established among men. Among men, you 
see the ninety and nine toiling and scraping together a heap of super- 
fluities for one, (and this one, too, oftentimes, the feeblest and worst of 
the whole set — a child, a woman, a madman, or a fool *) getting noth- 
ing for themselves all the while, but a little of the coarsest of the pro- 
vision which their own industry produces ] looking quietly on, while 
they see the fruits of all their labor spent or spoiled ] and if one of the 
number take or touch a particle of the hoard, the others joining against 
him, and hanging him for the theft. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE USE OF THE INSTITUTION OF PROPERTY. 

There must be some very important advantages to account for an 
institution, which, in the view of it above given, is so paradoxical and 
unnatural. 



62 INSTITUTION OF PROPERTY. 

The principal of these advantages are the following : 

1. It increases the produce of the earth. 

The earth, in climates like ours, produces little without cultivation : 
and none would be found willing to cultivate the ground, if others were 
to be admitted to an equal share of the produce. The same is true of 
the care of flocks and herds of tame animals. 

Crabs and acorns, red deer, rabbits, game, and fish, are all which we 
should have to subsist upon in this country, if we trusted to the spon- 
taneous productions of the soil ] and it fares not much better with other 
countries. A nation of North American savages, consisting of two or 
three hundred, will take up, and be half starved upon a tract of land 
which, in Europe, and with European management, would be suflicient 
for the maintenance of as many thousands. 

In some fertile soils, together with great abundance of fish upon their 
coasts, and in regions where clothes are unnecessary, a considerable 
degree of population may subsist without property in land, which is 
the case in the islands of Otaheite : but in less favored situations, as in 
the country of New Zealand, though this sort of property obtain in a 
small degree, the inhabitants, for want of a more secure and regular 
establishment of it, are driven oftentimes by the scarcity of provision to 
devour one another. 

2. It preserves the produce of the earth to maturity. 

We may judge what would be the effects of a community of right to 
the productions of the earth, from the trifling specimens which we see 
of it at present. A cherry tree in a hedge-row, nuts in a wood, the 
grass of an unstinted pasture, are seldom of much advantage to any- 
body, because people do not wait for the proper season of reaping 
them. Corn, if any were sown, would never ripen ] lambs and calves 
would never grow up to sheep and cows, because the first person that 
met them would reflect that he had better take them as they are, than 
leave them for another. 

3. It prevents contests. 

War and waste, tumult and confusion, must be unavoidable and 
eternal, where there is not enough for all, and where there are no rules 
to adjust the division. 

4. It improves the conveniency of living. 

This it does in two ways. It enables mankind to divide themselves 
into distinct professions ; which is impossible, unless a man can ex- 
change the productions of his own art for what he wants from others ) 
and exchange implies property. Much of the advantage of civilized 
over savage life depends upon this. When a man is from necessity his 
own tailor, tent-maker, carpenter, cook, huntsman, and fisherman, it is 
not probable that he will be expert at any of his callings. Hence the 
rude habitations, furniture, clothing, and implements of savages ] and 
the tedious length of time which all their operations require. 

It likewise encourages those arts by which the accommodations of 
human life are supplied, by appropriating to the artist the benefit of his 
discoveries and improvements ; without which appropriation, ingenuity 
will never be exerted with effect. 



HISTORY OF PROPERTY. 53 

Upon these several accounts we may venture, with a few exceptions, 
to pronounce that even the poorest and the worst provided, in countries 
where property and the consequences of property prevail, are in a better 
situation, with respect to food, raiment, houses, and what are called the 
necessaries of life, than any are in places where most things remain in 
common. 

The balance, therefore, upon the whole must preponderate in favor 
of property with a manifest and ^reat excess. 

Inequality of property, in the degree in which it exists in most conn- 
tries of Europe, abstractedly considered, is an evil ; but it is an evil which 
flows from those rules concerning the acquisition and disposal of pro- 
perty, by which men are incited to mdustry, and by which the object of 
their industry is rendered secure and valuable. If there be any great 
inequality unconnected with this origin, it ought to be corrected. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE HISTORY OF PROPERTY. 

The first objects of property were the fruits which a man gathered, 
and the wild animals he caught* next to these, the tents or houses 
which he built, the tools he made use of to catch or prepare his food ] 
and afterward weapons of war and oifence. Many of the savage tribes 
in North America have advanced no farther than this yet ] for they are 
said to reap their harvest, and return the produce of their market with 
foreigners, into the common hoard or treasury of the tribe. Flocks and 
herds of tame animals soon became property : Abel, the second from 
Adam, was a keeper of sheep ; sheep and oxen, camels and asses, com- 
posed the wealth of the Jewish patriarchs, as they do still of the modern 
Arabs. As the world was first peopled in the East, where there exist- 
ed a great scarcity of water, wells probably were next made property ; 
as we learn from the frequent and serious mention of them in the Old 
Testament; the contentions and treaties about them;* and from its 
being recorded among the most memorable achievements of very emi- 
nent men, that they dug or discovered a well. Land, which is now so 
important a part of property, which alone our laws call real property, 
and regard upon all occasions with such peculiar attention, was proba- 
bly not made property in any country, till long after the institution ol 
many other species of property, that is, till the country became popu- 
lous, and tillage began to be thought of. The first partition of an estate 
which we read of, was that which took place between Abram and Lot, 
and was one of the simplest imaginable: '-If thou wilt take the left 
hand, then I will go to the right ] or if thou depart to the right hand, 
then I will go to the left." There are no traces of property in land in 
CsBsars account of Britain ; little of it in the historv of the Jewish Pa- 



• Genesis, xxi. 25 : xxvi. 18. 



54 



RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 



triarchs ] none of it found among the nations of North America * the 
Scythians are expressly said to have appropriated their cattle and 
houses, but to have left their land in common. 

Property in immovables continued at first no longer than the occupa- 
tion I that is, so long as a man's family continued in possession of a 
cave, or while his flocks depastured upon a neighboring hill, no one 
attempted, or thought he had a right, to disturb or drive them out 3 but 
when the man quitted his cave, or changed his pasture, the first who 
found them unoccupied entered upon them, by the same title as his pre- 
decessors ', and made way in his turn for any one that happened to 
succeed him. All more permanent property in land was probably pos- 
terior to civil government and to laws 3 and therefore settled by these, 
or according to the will of the reigning chief. 



CHAPTER IV. 

IN WHAT THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IS FOUNDED. 

We now speak of Property in Land ; and there is a difficulty in ex- 
plaining the origin of this property consistently with the law of nature ; 
for the land was once, no doubt, common ; and the question is, how 
any particular part of it could justly be taken out of the common, and 
so appropriated to the first owner as to give him a better right to it than 
others ; and, what is more, a right to exclude all others from it. 

Moralists have given many different accounts of this matter ; which 
diversity alone, perhaps, is a proof that none of them are satisfactory. 

One tells us that mankind, when they suffered a particular person to 
occupy a piece of ground, by tacit consent relinquished their right to it • 
and as the piece of ground, they say, belonged to mankind collectively, 
and mankind thus gave up their right to the first peaceable occupier, it 
thenceforward became his property, and no one afterward had a right 
to molest him in it. 

The objection to this account is, that consent can never be presumed 
from silence, where the person whose consent is required knows noth- 
ing about the matter ; which must have been the case w^ith all man- 
kind, except the neighj;)orhood of the place where the appropriation was 
made. And to suppose that the piece of ground previously belonged 
to the neighborhood, and that they had a just power of conferring a 
right to it upon whom they pleased, is to suppose the question resolved, 
and a partition of land to have already taken place. 

Another says, that each man's limbs and labor are his own exclu- 
sively ; that, by occupying a piece of ground, a man inseparably mixes 
his labor with it : by which means the piece of ground becomes thence- 
forward his own, as you cannot take it from him without depriving him 
at the same time of something which is indisputably his. 

This is Mr. Locke's solution ; and seems indeed a fair reason, where 
the value of the labor bears a considerable proportion to the value v.. 



RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 55 

the thing ; or where the thing derives its chief use and value from the 
labor. Thus game and fish, though they be common while at large in 
the woods or water, instantly become the property of the person that 
catches them ] because an animal when caught is much more valuable 
.than when at liberty : and this increase of value, which is inseparable 
from and makes a great part of the whole value, is strictly the property 
of the fowler or fisherman, being the produce of his personal labor. 
For the same reason, wood or iron, manufactured into utensils, become 
the property of the manufacturer • because the value of the workman- 
ship far exceeds that of the materials. And upon a similar principle, 
a parcel of unappropriated ground, which a man should pare, burn, 
plough, harrow, and sow, for the production of corn, would justly 
enough be thereby made his own. But this will hardly hold, in the 
manner it has been applied, of taking a ceremonious possession of a 
tract of land, as navigators do of new discovered islands, by erecting a 
standard, engraving an inscription, or publishing a proclamation to the 
birds and beasts * or of turning your cattle into a piece of ground, set- 
ting up a landmark, digging a ditrh, or planting a hedge round it. Nor 
will even the clearing, manuring, and ploughing of a field give the fii'^t 
occupier a right to it in perpetuity, and after this cultivation and all 
effects of it are ceased. 

Another, and, in my opinion, a better account of the first right of 
ownership is the following : That, as God has provided these things for 
the use of all, he has of consequence given each leave to take of them 
what he wants : by virtue, therefore, of this leave, a man may appro- 
priate what he stands in need of to his own use, without asking or 
waiting for the consent of others ; in like manner, as, whexi an enter- 
tainment is provided for the freeholders of a county, each freeholder 
goes, and eats and drinks what he wants or chooses, without having or 
waiting for the consent of the other guests. 

But then this reason justifies property, as far as necessaries alone, oi 
at the most, as far as a competent provision for our natural exigencies. 
For, in the entertainment we speak of, (allowing the comparison to hold 
in all points,) although every particular freeholder may sit down and 
eat till he be satisfied, without any other leave than that of the master 
of the feast, or any other proof of that leave than the general invitation, 
or the manifest design with w^hich the entertainment is provided : yet 
you would hardly permit any one to fill his pockets or his wallet, or to 
carry away with him a quantity of provisions to be hoarded up, or 
wasted, or given to his dogs, or stewed down into sauces, or converted 
into articles of superfluous luxury; especially if, by so doing, he pinch- 
ed the guests at the lower end of the table. 

These are the accounts that have been given of the matter by 
the best writers upon the subject ] but, w^ere these accounts perfectly 
unexceptionable, they would none of them, I fear, avail us in vindi- 
cating our present claims of property in land, unless it were more pro- 
bable than it is, that our estates were actually acquired, at first, in some 
of the ways which these accounts suppose ; and thai a regular re- 
gard had been paid to justice, in every successive transmission of them 



56 RIGHT OF PROPERTY. 

since ; for, if one link in the chain fail, every title posterior to it falls to 
the ground. 

The real foundation of our right is the law of the land. 

It is the intention of God tliat the produce of the earth be applied to 
the use of man : this intention cannot be fulfilled without establishing 
property : it is consistent, therefore, with his will that property be es-' 
tablished. The land cannot be divided into separate property, without 
leaving it to the law of the country to regulate that division : it is con- 
sistent therefore with the same wiiJj that the law should regulate the 
division: and, coiisequentjy, '' consistent with the will of God," or 
" right," that I should possess that share which these regulations as- 
signed me. 

By v,^ha lever circuitous train of reasoning you attempt to derive this 
right, it must determine at last in the will of God ; the straightest, there- 
fore, and shortest way oi arriving at this will is the best. 

Hence it appears, that my right to an estate does not at all depend 
upon the manner or justice of the originai acquisition ; nor upon the 
justice of each subsequent change of possession. It is not, for instance, 
the less, nor ought it to be impeached, because the estate was taken pos- 
session of at first by a family of aboriginal Britons, who happened to be 
stronger than their neighbors, nor because the British possessor was 
turned out by a Roman, or the Roman by a Saxon invader ; nor because 
it was seized, v/ithout color of ris^ht or reason, by a follower of the Nor- 
man adventurer ; from whom, aftf r many interruptions of fraud and vio- 
lence, it has at. length devolved to me. 

JNor does ihe owner's right depend upon the expediency ot the law 
which gives it to him. On one side of a brook an estate descends to 
the eldest son ; on the other side, to all the children alike. The right 
of the claimants under both laws of inheritance is equal ; though the 
expediency of such opposite rules must necessarily be different. 

The principles we have laid down upon this subject apparently tend 
to a conclusion of which a bad use is apt to be made. As the right of 
property depends upon the law cf the land, it seems to follow that a 
man has a right to keep and take every thing which the law will allow 
him to keep and take ; which in many cases will authorize the most 
flagitious chicanery. If a creditor upon a simple contract neglect to 
demand his debt for six years, the debtor may refuse to pay it : would 
it be right therefore to do so, where he is conscious of the justice of the 
debt ? If a person who is under twenty-one years of age contract a 
bargain (other than for necessaries,) he may avoid it by pleading hij> 
minority : but would this be a fair plea, where the bargain was origi- 
nally just '? — The distinction to be taken in such cases is this : With the 
law, we acknowledge, resides the disposal of property ; so long, there- 
fore, as we keep within the design and intention of a law, that law will 
justify us, as well in foro conscientice, as in for o humano, whatever be 
the equity or expediency of the law itself. But when we convert to one 
purpose a rule or expression of law which is intended for another pur- 
pose, then we plead in our justification, not the intention of the law, but 
the words : that is, we plead a dead letter which can signify nothing; 



PROMISES. 51 

for words without meaning or intention have no force or effect in justice , 
much less words taken contrary to the meaning and intention of the 
speaker or writer. To apply this distinction to the examples just now 
proposed : In order to protect men against antiquated demands, from 
which it is not probable they should have preserved the evidence of 
their discharge, the law prescribes a limited time to certain species of 
private securities, beyond which it will not enforce them or lend its as- 
sistance to the recovery of the debt. If a man be ignorant or dubious 
of the justice of the demand made upon him, he may conscientiously 
plead this limitation ] because he applies the rule of law to the purpose 
for which it was intended. But when he refuses to pay a debt, of the 
reality of which he is conscious, he cannot, as before, plead the intention 
of the statute, and the supreme authority of law ; unless he could show 
that the law intended to interpose its supreme authority, to acquit men 
of debts, of the existence and justice of which they were themselves 
sensible. Again, to preserve youth from the practices and impositions 
to which their inexperience exposes them, the law compels the payment 
of no debts incurred within a certain age, nor the performance of any 
engagements, except for such necessaries as are suited to their condition 
and fortunes. If a young person, therefore, perceived that he has been 
practised or imposed upon, he may honestly avail himself of the privi- 
lege of his nonage, to defeat the circumvention. But if he shelter him- 
self under this privilege, to avoid a fair obligation, or an equitable con- 
tract, he extends the privilege to a case in which it is not allowed by 
intention of law, and in which, consequently, it does not in natural jus- 
lice, exist. 

As property is the principal subject of justice, or of " the determinate 
relative duties," we have put down what we had to say upon it in the 
first place : we now proceed to state these duties in the best order we 
lan. 



CHAPTER V. 

PROMISES. 

1 . From whence the obligation to perform promises arises, 

2. In what sense promises are to be interpreted. 

3. In what cases promises are not binding. 

1 . From whence the obligation to perform promises arises. 
They who argue from innate moral principles suppose a sense of the 
obligation of promises to be one of them : but, without assuming this, 
or anything else, without proof, the obligation to perform promises may 
be deduced from the necessity of such a conduct to the well-being, or 
the existence, indeed, of human society. 

Men act from expectation. Expectation is in most cases determined 
by the assurances and engagements which we receive from others. If 

C 2 



i>8 PROMISES. 

no dependence could be placed upon these assurances, it would be im- 
possible to know what judgment to form of many future events, or how 
to regulate our conduct with respect to them. Confidence, therefore, in 
promises, is essential to the intercourse of human life 3 because, with- 
out it, the greatest part of our conduct would proceed upon chance. 
But there could be no confidence in promises if men were not obliged 
to perform them : the obligation therefore to perform promises is essen- 
tial to the same ends, and in the same degree. 

Some may imagine, that if this obligation were suspended, a general 
caution and mutual distrust would ensue, which might do as well : but 
this is imagined, without considering how, every hour of our lives, 
we trust to and depend upon others ] and how impossible it is to stir a 
step, or, what is worse to sit still a moment, without such trust and de- 
pendence. I am now writing at my ease, not doubting (or rather never 
distrusting, and therefore never thinking about it,) that the butcher will 
sgnd in the joint of meat which I ordered ] that his servant will bring 
it ; that my cook will dress it ] that my footman w411 serve it up ] and 
that 1 shall find it upon my table at one o'clock. Yet have I nothing 
for all this but the promise of the butcher, and the implied promise of 
his servant and mine. And the same holds of the most important as 
well as the most familiar occurrences of social life. In the one the in- 
tervention of promises is formal, and is seen and acknowledged ; our in- 
stance, therefore, is intended to show it in the other, where it is not so 
distinctly observed. 

2. In what sense promises are to he interpreted. 

Where the terms of promise admit of more senses than one, the pro- 
mise is to be performed " in that sense in which the promiser appre- 
hended, at the time, that the promisee received it." 

It is not the sense in which the promiser actually intended it, that al- 
ways governs the interpretation of an equivocal promise ; because, at 
that rate, you might excite expectations which you never meant, nor 
would be obliged to satisfy. Much less is it the sense in which the 
promisee actually received the promise : for, according to that rule, you 
might be drawn into engagements which you never designed to under- 
take. It must therefore be the sense (for there is no other remaining) 
in which the promiser believed that the promisee accepted his promise. 

This will not differ from the actual intention of the promiser, where 
the promise is given without collusion or reserve : but we put the rule 
in the above form, to exclude evasion in cases in which the popular 
meaning of the phrase, and the strict grammatical signification of the 
words differ ; or, in general, wherever the promiser attempts to make 
his escape through some ambiguity in the expressions which he used. 

Temures promised the garrison of Sebastia, that if they would surren- 
der, no blood should be sJied. The garrison surrendered ; and Temures 
buried them all alive. Now Temures fulfilled the promise in one sense, 
and in the sense too in which he intended it at the time ; but not in the 
sense in which the garrison of Sebastia actually received it, nor in the 
sense in which Temures himself knew that the garrison received it ; 
which last sense, according to our rule, was the sense in which he was 
in conscience bound to have nerformerl it. 



PROMISES. 59 

From the account we have given oi the obligation of promises, it is 
evident that this obligation depends upon the expectations which we 
knowingly and voluntarily excite. Consequently, any action or con-' 
duct toward another, which we are sensible excites expectations in that 
other, is as much a promise, and creates as strict an obligation as the 
most express assurances. Taking, for instance, a kinsman's child, and 
educating him for a liberal profession, or hi a manner suitable only for 
the heir of a large fortune, as much obliges us to place him in that pro- 
fession, or to leave him such a fortune, as if we had given him a pro- 
mise to do so under our hands and seals. In like manner, a great man 
who encourages an indigent retainer : or a minister of state, who dis- 
tinguishes and caresses at his levee one who is in a situation to be 
obliged by his patronage • engages, by such behavior, to provide for 
him. This is the foundation of tacit promises. 

You may either simply declare your present intention, or you may 
accompany your declaration with an engagement to abide by it, which 
constitutes a complete promise. In the first case, the duty is satisfied 
if you were sincere at the time ; that is, if you entertained at the time 
the intention you expressed, however soon, or for whatever reason, you 
afterward change it. In the latter case, you have parted with the 
liberty of changing. All this is plain : but it mufst be observed, that 
most of those forms of speech, which, strictly taken, amount to no more 
than declarations of present intention, do yei, in the usual way of un- 
derstanding them, excite the expectation, and therefore carry with them 
the force of absolute promises. Such as, " I intend you this place" — 
" I design to leave you this estate " — " I purpose giving you my 
vote "— " I mean to serve you." In which, although the '• intention," 
the " design," the " purpose," the '• meaning," be expressed in words of 
the present time, yet you cannot afterward recede from them without a 
breach of good faith. If you choose therefore to make known your 
present intention, and yet to reserve to yourself the liberty of changing 
it, you must guard your expressions by an additional clause, as " I in- 
tend at present ^'^ — " if I do not alter, ^^ — or the like. And after all, as 
there can be no reason for communicating your intention, but to excite 
some degree of expectation or other, a wanton change of an intention 
which is once disclosed, always disappoints somebody ; and is always 
for that reason wrong. 

There is, in some men, an infirmity with regard to promises, which 
often betrays them into great distress. From the confusion, or hesita- 
tion, or obscurity, with which they express themselves, especially when 
overawed or taken by surprise, they sometimes encourage expectations, 
and bring upon themselves demands, which, possibly, they never 
dreamed of. This is a want, not so much of integrity, as of presence 
of mind. 

3. In what cases promises are not binding. 

1. Promises are not binding where the performance is impossible. 

But observe, that the promiser is guilty of a fraud, if he be secretly 
aware of the impossibility at the time of making the promise. For, 
when any one promises a thin_c, h;' asserts his belief, at least, of the 



(JO PROMISES. 

possibiliiy of performing it; as no one can accept or understand a pro- 
mise under any other supposition. Instances of this sort are the fol- 
lowing : The minister promises a place, which he knows to be engaged, 
or not at his disposal : — A father, in settling marriage articles, promises 
to kave his daughter an estate, which he knows to be entailed upon 
the heir male of his family :— A merchant promises a ship, or share of 
a ship, which he is privately advised is lost at sea :— -An incumbent 
promises to resign a living, being previously assured that his resigna- 
tion will not be accepted by the bishop. The promiser, as in these 
cases, with knowledge of the impossibility, is justly answerable in an 
equivalent ; but otherwise not. 

When the promiser himself occasions the impossibility, it is neither 
more nor less than a dhect breach of the promise ; as when a soldier 
maims or a servant disables himself, to get rid of his engagements. 

2. Promises are not binding w^hen the performance is unlawful. 

There are two cases of this : one, where the unlawfulness is known 
to the parties at the time of making the promise ; as, where an assas- 
sin promises his employer to despatch his rival or his enemy ; a servant 
to betray his master ; a pimp to procure a mistress ) or d, friend to give 
his assistance in a scheme of seduction. The parties in these cases are 
not obliged to perform what the promise requires, because they were 
U7ider a prior obligation to the contrary. From which prior obliga- 
tion what is there to discharge them ? Their promise — their own act 
and deed. But an obligation, from which a man can discharge himself 
by his own act, is no obligation at all. The guilt therefore of such 
promises lies in the making, not in the breaking of them ; and if, in the 
interval betv/een the promise and the performance, a man so far recov- 
er his reflection as to repent of his engagements, he ought certainly to 
break through them, 

The other case is, where the unlawfulness did not exist, or was not 
known, at the time of making the promise : as where a merchant pro- 
mises his correspondent abroad to send him a ship load of corn at a 
time appointed, and before the time arrive an embargo is laid upon the 
exportation of corn : — A woman gives a promise of marriage 3 before 
the marriage, she discovers that her intended husband is too nearly re- 
lated to her, or that he has a wife yet living. In all such cases, where 
the contrary does not appear, it must be presumed that the parties sup- 
posed what they promised to be lawful, and that the promise proceeded 
entirely upon this supposition. The lawfulness, therefore, becomes a 
condition of the promise ', which condition failing, the obligation ceases. 
Of the same nature was Herod's })romise to his daughter-in-law, " that 
he would give her whatever she asked, even to the half of his king- 
dom." The promise was not unlawful in the terms in which Herod 
delivered it ; and when it became so by the daughter's choice, by her 
demanding '• John the Baptist's head," Herod was discharged from the 
obligation of it, for the reason now laid down, as v/ell as for that given 
in the last paragraph. 

This rule, *^ that promises are void, where the performance is unlaw- 
ful," extends also to imperfect obligations ; for the reason of the rule 



PROMISES. 61 

holds of all obligations. Thus, if you promise a man a place or your 
vote, and he afterward render himself unfit to receive either, yo.i are 
absolved from the obligation of your promise : or, if a better candidate 
appear, and if it be a case in which you are bound by oath, or other- 
wise, to govern yourself by the qualification, the promise must be bro- 
ken through. 

And here I would recommend, to young persons especially, a caution, 
from the neglect of which many involve themselves in embarrassment 
and disgrace* and that is, " never to give a promise which may inter- 
fere in the event with their duty ;" for, if it do so interfere, their duty 
must be discharged, though at the expense of their promise, and not unu- 
sually of their good name. 

The specific performance of promises is reckoned a perfect obligation. 
And many casuists have laid down, in opposition to what has been here 
asserted, that, were a perfect and an imperfect obligation to clash, the 
perfect obligation is to be preferred. For which opinion, however, there 
seems to be no reason, but what arises from the terms "perfect" and 
" imperfect," the impropriety of which has been remarked above. The 
truth is, of two contradictory obligations, that ought to prevail which is 
prior in point of time. 

It is the performance being unlawful, and not any unlawfulness in 
the subject or motive of the promise, which destroys its validity : there- 
fore a bribe, after the vote is given ; the wages of prostitution ] the re- 
ward of any crime, after the crime is committed ] ought, if promised, to 
be paid. For the sin and mischief, by this supposition, are over; and 
will be neither more nor less for the performance of the promise. 

In like manner, a promise does not lose its obligation merely because 
it proceeded from an unlawful motive. A certain person, in the lifetime 
of his wife, who was then sick, had paid his addresses and promised 
marriage to another woman ] the wife died ] and the woman demanded 
the performance of the promise. The man, who, it seems, had changed 
his mind, either felt or pretended doubts concerning the obligation of 
such a promise, and referred his case to Bishop Sanderson, the most 
eminent, in this kind of knowledge, of his time. Bishop Sanderson, 
after writing a dissertation upon the question, adjudged the promise to 
be void : in which, however, upon our principles, he was wrong ; for, 
however criminal the aflfection might be which induced the promise, the 
performance, when it was demanded, was lawful ] which is the only 
lawfulness required. 

A promise cannot be deemed unlawful, where it produces, when per- 
formed, no effect beyond what would have taken place had the promise 
never been made. And this is the single case, in which the obligation 
of a promise will justify a conduct which, unless it had been promised, 
yrould be unjust. A captive may law^fully recover his liberty, by a 
promise of neutrality ; for his conqueror takes nothing by the promise, 
which he might not have secured by his death or confinement ] and 
neutrality would be innocent in him, although criminal in another. It 
is manifest^ however, that promises, which come into the place of coer- 
cion, can extend no farther than to passive compliances; for coercion 



62 PROMISES. 

itself could compel no more. Upon the same principle, promises of 
secrecy ought not to be violated, although the public would derive ad- 
vantage from the discovery. Such promises contain no unlawfulness 
in them to destroy their obligation ] for as the information would not 
have been imparted upon any other condition, the public lose nothing 
by the promise, which they would have gained without it. 

3. Promises are not binding, where they contradict a former 'promise ; 
Because the performance is then unlawful * which resolves this case 

into the last. 

4. Promises are not binding before acceptance ; that is, before notice 
given to the promisee ] for, where the promise is beneficial, if notice be 
given, acceptance may be presumed. Until the promise be communica- 
ted to the promisee, it is the same only as a resolution in the mind of 
the promiser, which may be altered at pleasure. For no expectation 
has been excited, therefore none can be disappointed. 

But suppose I declare my intention to a third person, who, without 
any authority from me, conveys my declaration to the promisee ; is that 
such a notice as will be binding upon me ? It certainly is not : for I 
have not done that which constitutes the essence of a promise — I have 
not voluntarily excited expectation. 

5. Promises are not binding which are released by the promisee. 
This is evident ; but it may be sometimes doubted who the promisee 

is. If I give a promise to A., of a place to vote for B.; as to a father 
for his son : to an uncle for his nephew ; to a friend of mine for a rela- 
tion or friend of his; then A. is the promisee, whose consent I must 
obtain, to be released from the engagement. 

If I promise a place or vote to B. by A., that is, if A. be a messenger 
to convey the promise, as if I should say, " You may tell B. that he 
shall have this place, or may depend upon my vote ;" or if A. be em^ 
ployed to introduce B.'s request, and I answer in any terms which 
amount to a compliance with it ] then B. is the promisee. 

Promises to one person, for the benefit of another, are not released by 
the death of the promisee : for his death neither makes the performance 
impracticable, nor implies any consent to release the promiser from it, 

6. Erroneous promises are not binding in certain cases ; as, 

1. Where the error proceeds from the mistake or misrepresentation 
of the promisee. 

Because a promise evidently supposes the truth of the account, which 
the promisee relates in order to obtain it, A beggar solicits your charity 
by a story of the most pitiable distress ; you promise to relieve him, if 
he will call again : In the interval you discover his stDry to be made up 
of lies ; this discovery, no doubt, releases you from your promise. One 
who wants your service describes the business or office for which he 
would engage you ; you promise to undertake it : when you come to 
enter upon it, you find the profits less, the labor more, or some material 
circumstance different from the account he gave you : In such case, you 
are not bound by your promise. 

2. When the promise is understood by the promisee to proceed upon 
e certain supposition, or when the promiser apprehended it to be so 



PROMISES. n3 

understood, and that supposition turns out to be false • then the promise 
is not binding. 

This intricate rule will be best explained by an example. A father 
receives an account from abroad, of the death of his only son • — soon 
after which, he promises his fortune to his nephew. The account turns 
out to be false. The father, we say, is released from his promise; not 
merely because he never would have made it, had he known the truth 
of the case — for that alone will not do ; — but because the nephew alsc 
himself understood the promise to proceed upon the supposition of his 
cousin's death ; or, at least his uncle thought he so understood it, and 
could not think otherwise. The promise proceeded upon this supposi- 
tion in the promiser's own apprehension, and, as he believed, in the ap- 
prehension of both parties ; and this belief of his is the precise circum- 
stance which sets him free. The foundation of the rule is plainly this : 
a man is bound only to satisfy the expectation which he intended to 
excite ) whatever condition therefore he intended to subject that expec- 
tation to, becomes an essential condition of the promise. 

Errors which come not within this description, do not annul the ob- 
ligation of a promise. I promise a candidate my vote ] — presently an- 
other candidate appears, for whom I certainly would have reserved it, 
had I been acquainted with his design. Here, therefore, as before, my 
promise proceeded from an error ; and I never should have given such 
a promise, had I been aware of the truth of the case, as it has turned 
out. — But the 'promisee did not know this ] — he did not receive the pro- 
mise subject to any such condition, or as proceeding from any such sup- 
position • nor did I at the time imagine he so received it. This error, 
therefore, of mine must fall upon my own head, and the promise be ob- 
served notwithstanding. A father promises a certain fortune with his 
daughter, supposing himself to be worth so much — his circumstances 
turn out, upon examination, worse than he was aware of. Here again 
the promise was erroneous, but, for the reason assigned in the last case, 
will nevertheless be obligatory. 

The case of erroneous promises is attended with some difficulty : for, 
to allow every mistake, or change of circumstances, to dissolve the ob- 
ligation of a promise, would be to allow a latitude, which might evacu- 
ate the force of almost all promises ; and, on the other hand, to ginl the 
obligation so tight, as to make no allowances for manifest and funda- 
"nental errors, would in many instances, be productive of great hardship 
and absurdity. 



It has long been controverted among moralists, whether promises be 
binding which are extorted by violence or fear. The obligation of all 
promises results, we have seen, from the necessity or the use of that con- 
fidence which mankind repose in them. The question, therefore, 
whether these promises are binding, will depend upon this; whether 
mankind, upon the whole, are benefited by the confidence placed on such 
promises. A highwayman attacks you — and being disappointed of his 



64 CONTRACTS. 

booty, threatens or prepares to murder you ; you promise, with many 
solemn asseverations, that if he will spare your life, he shall find a purse 
of money left for him at a place appointed : upon the faith of this pro- 
mise, he forbears from farther violence. Now your life w^as saved by 
the confidence reposed in a promise extorted by fear ; and the lives of 
many others may be saved by the same. This is a good consequence. 
On the other hand, confidence in promises like these greatly facilitates the 
perpetration of robberies : tney may be made the instruments of almost 
unlimited extortion. This is a bad consequence : and in the question 
between the importance of these opposite consequences, resides the 
doubt concerning the obligation of such promises. 

There are other cases which are plainer ; as where a magistrate con* 
fines a disturber of the public peace in jail, till he promise to behave 
better ; or a prisoner of war promises, if set at liberty, to leturn within 
a certain time. These promises, say moralists, are binding, because the 
violence or duress is just ; but the truth is, because there is the same 
use of confidence in these promises, as of confidence in the promises of 
% person at perfect liberty. 



Vows are promises to God. The obligation cannot be made out upon 
the same principle as that of other promises. The violation of them, 
nevertheless, implies a want of reverence to the Supreme Being ; which 
is enough to make it sinful. 

There appears no command or encouragement in the Christian Scrip- 
tures to make vows * much less any authority to break through them 
when they are made. The few instances* of vows which w^e read of 
in the New Testament were religiously observed. 

The rules we have laid down concerning promises, are applicable to 
vows. Thus, Jephtha's vow, taken in the sense in which that transac- 
tion is commonly understood, was not binding, because the performance 
in that contingency, became unlawful. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CONTRACTS. 

A CONTRACT is a mutual promise. The obligation, therefore, of 
contracts, the sense in which they are to be interpreted, and the cases 
where they are not binding, will be the same as of promises. 

From the principle established in the last chapter, " that the obliga- 
tion of promises is to be measured by the expectation which the pro- 
miser any how voluntarily and know^ingly excites," results a rule which 



Acts, xviii. IS j xxl. 23. 



CONTRACTS. 



65 



governs the construction of all contracts, anc is capable, from its sim- 
plicity, of being applied with great ease and certainty, viz. That 

Whatever is expected by one side, and known to be so expected by 
the other, is to be deemed a part or condition of the contract. 

The several kinds of contracts, and the order in which we propose 
to consider them, may be exhibited at one view, thus : 
f Sale. 
Hazard. 



Contracts oi^ Lending of | £^^3'^""^^^^ property. 



^ Labor. 



Service. 
Commissions. 
Partnership. 
Offices. 



CHAPTER Vn. 



CONTRACTS OF SALE. 

The rule of justice which wants with most anxiety to be inculcated 
in the making of bargains, is, that the seller is bound in conscience to 
disclose the faults of what he offers to sale. Among other methods of 
proving this, one may be the following : — 

I suppose it will be allowed, that to advance a direct falsehood in 
recommendation of our wares, by ascribing to them some quality which 
we know that they have not, is dishonest. Now compare with this 
the designed concealment of some fault, which we know that they 
have. The motives and the effects of actions are the only points of 
comparison in which their moral quality can differ ; but the motive in 
these two cases is the same, viz., to procure a higher price than we ex- 
pect otherwise to obtain : the effect, that is, the prejudice to the buyer, 
is also the same ; for he finds himself equally out of pocket by his 
bargain, whether the commodity, when he gets home with it, turn out 
worse than he had supposed, by the want of some quality which he 
expected, or the discovery of some fault which he did not expect. If, 
therefore, actions be the same as to all moral purposes, which proceed 
from the same motives and produce the same effects ; it is making a dis- 
tinction without a difference, to esteem it a cheat to magnify beyond the 
truth the virtues of what we have to sell, but none to conceal its 
faults. 

It adds to the value of this kind of honesty, that the faults of many 
things are of a nature not to be known by any, but by the persons who 
have used them ; so that the buyer has no security from imposition, 
but in the ingenuousness and integrity of the seller. 



66 CONTRACTS. 

^ There is one exception, however, to this rule ; namely, where the 
silence of the seller implies some fault in the thing to be sold, and where 
the buyer has a compensation in the price for the risk which he runs 3 
as, where a horse, in a London repository, is sold by public auction, 
without warranty ; the want of warranty is notice of some unsound- 
ness, and produces a proportionable abatement in the price. 

To this of concealing the faults of what we want to put off, may be 
referred the practice of passing bad money. This practice we some- 
times hear defended by a vulgar excuse, that we have taken the money 
for good, and must therefore get rid of it. Which excuse is much the 
same as if one who had been robbed upon the highway should allege, 
that he had a right to reimburse himself out of the pocket of the first, 
traveller he met : the justice of which reasoning the traveller possibly 
may not comprehend. 

Where there exists no monopoly or combination, the market price is 
always a fair price ] because it will always be proportionable to the 
use and scarcity of the article. Hence, there need be no scruple about 
demanding or taking the market price ; and all those expressions, 
" provisions are extravagantly dear," '' corn bears an unreasonable 
price,-' and the like, import no unfairness or unreasonableness in the 
seller. 

If your tailor or your draper charge, or even ask of you, more for a 
suit of clothes than the market price, 3^ou complain that you are impo- 
sed upon ] you pronounce the tradesman, who makes such a charge, 
dishonest ; although, as the man's goods were his own, and he had a 
right to prescribe the terms upon which he would consent to part with 
them, it may be questioned what dishonesty there can be in the case, or 
wherein the imposition consists. Whoever opens a shop, or in any 
manner exposes goods to public sale, virtually engages to deal with 
his customers at a market price ; because it is upon the faith and opin- 
ion of such an engagement, that any one comes within his shop doors, 
or offers to treat with him. This is expected by the buyer; is known 
to be so expected by the seller ; which is enough, according to the rule 
delivered above, to make it a part of the contract betv/een them, though 
not a syllable be said about it. The breach of this implied contract 
constitutes the fraud inquired after. 

Hence, if you disclaim any such engagement, you may set what value 
you please upon your property. If, upon being asked to sell a house, 
you answer that the house suits your fancy or conveniency, and that 
you will not turn yourself out of it under such a price ; the price fixed 
may be double of what the house cost, or would fetch at a public sale, 
without any imputation of injustice or extortion upon you. 

If the thing sold be damaged, or perish between the sale and the de- 
livery, ought the buyer to bear the loss, or the seller ? This will de- 
pend upon the particular construction of the contract. If the seller, 
either expressly, or by implication, or by custom, engage to deliver the 
goods : as, if I buy a set of china, and the china man ask me to what 
place he shall bring or send them, and they be broken in the convey- 
ance, the seller must abide by the loss. If the things sold remain with 



CONTRACTS. 67 

the seller, at the instance or for the convenience of the buyer, then the 
buyer undertakes the risk ; as, if I buy a horse, and mention that 1 
will send for it on such a day, (which is, in effect, desiring that it may 
continue with the seller till I do send for it,) then, whatever misfortune 
befalls the horse in the meantime, must be at my cost. 

And here, once for all, I would observe, that innumerable questions 
of this sort are determined solely by custom ; not that custom possesses 
any proper authority to alter or ascertain the nature of right and 
wrong ; but because the contracting parties are presumed to include in 
their stipulation all the conditions which custom has annexed to con- 
tracts of the same sort : and when the usage is notorious, and no 
exception made to it, this presumption is generally agreeable to the 
fact.* 

If I order a pipe of port from a wine merchant abroad ; at what pe- 
riod the property passes from the merchant to me ) whether upon de- 
livery of the wine at the merchant's warehouse • upon its being put on 
shipboard at Oporto * upon the arrival of the ship in England, at its 
destined port ] or not till the wine be committed to my servants or de- 
posited in my cellar : are all questions which admit of no decision but 
what custom points out. Whence, in justice as well as law, w^hat is 
called the custom of merchants regulates the construction of mercantile 
concerns. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CONTRACTS OF HAZARD. 

By contracts of Hazard, I mean gaming and insurance. 

What some say of this kind of contracts, " that one side ought not 
to have any advantage over the other," is neither practicable nor true. 
It is not practicable ; for that perfect equality of skill and judgment 
which this rule requires is ssllom to be met with. I might not have it 
in my power to play with fairness a game at cards, billiards, or tennis ; 
lay a wager at a horse race : or underwrite a policy of insurance, once 
in a twelve-month, if I must wait till I meet with a person whose art, 
skill, and judgment in these matters is neither greater nor less than 
my own. Nor is this equality requisite to the justice of the contract. 
One party may give to the other the whole of the stake, if he please, 
and the other party may justly accept it, if it be given him ; much 
more therefore may one give to the other a part of the stake ) or, what 



* It happens here, as in many cases, that what the parties ought to do, and what a 
judge or arbitrator would award to be done, may be very different. What the par- 
ties ought to do, by virtue of their contract, depends upon their consciousness at the 
time of making it : whereas a third person finda it necessary to found his judgment 
upon presumptions, which presumptions may be false, although the most probable 
that he could proceed by. 



68 CONTRACTS OF LENDING OF 

IS exactly the same thing, an advantage in the chance of winning the 
whole. 

The proper restriction is, that neither side have an advantage hy 
means of which the other is not aware ] for this is an advantage taken 
without being given. Although the event be still an uncertainty, your 
advantage in the chance has a certain value ] and so much of the stake 
as that value amounts to is taken from your adversary without his 
knowledge, and therefore without his consent. If I sit down to a game 
at whist, and have an advantage over the adversary, by means of a bet- 
ter memory, closer attention, or a superior knowledge of the rules and 
chances of the game, the advantage is fair ; because it is obtained by 
means of which the adversary is aware ; for he is aware when he sits 
down with me that I shall exert the skill that I possess to the utmost. 
But if I gain an advantage by packing the cards, glancing my eye inta 
the adversary's hands, or by concerted signals with my partner, it is a 
dishonest advantage : because it depends upon means which the adver- 
sary never suspects that I make use of. 

The same distinction holds of all contracts into which chance enters. 
If I lay a wager at a horse race, founded upon the conjecture I form 
from the appearance and character and breed of the horses, I am justly 
entitled to any advantage which my judgment gives me : but if I carry 
on a clandestine correspondence with the jockeys, and find out from 
them that a trial has been actually made, or that it is settled beforehand 
which horse shall w4n the race ; all such information is so much fraud, 
because derived from sources which the other did not suspect, when he 
proposed or accepted the wager. 

In speculations in trade or in tha stocks, if I exercise my judgment 
upon the general aspect and prospect of public affairs, and deal with a 
person who conducts himself by the same sort of judgment, the contract 
has all the equality in it which is necessary ; but if I have access to 
secrets 'of state at home, or private advice of som/^ decisive measure or 
event abroad, I cannot avail myself of these advantages with justice, 
because they are excluded by the contract, w^hich proceeded upon th'* 
supposition that I had no such advantage. 

In . insurances, in which the underwriter computes his risk entirely 
from the account given by the person insured, it is absolutely necessary 
to the justice and validity of the contract, that this account be exact 
and complete. 



CHAPTER IX. 

CONTRACTS OF LENDING OF INCONSUMABLE PROPERTY. 

When the identical loan is to be returned, as a book, a horse, a harp 
sichord, it is called inconsumable ; in opposition to corn, wine, money, 
and those things which perish, or are parted with in tlie use, and can 
therefore only be restored in kind. 



INCONSUMABLE PROPERTY. 69 

The questions under this head are few and simple. The first is, if 
the thing lent be lost or damaged, who ought to bear the loss or damage I 
If it be damaged by the use, or by accident in the use, for which it was 
lent, the lender ought to bear it ] as if I hire a job-coach, the wear, tear, 
and soiling of the coach must belong to the lender , or a horse to go 
a particular journey, and in going the proposed journey the horse die or 
be lamed, the loss must be the lender's : on the contrary, if the damage 
be occasioned by the fault of the borrower, or by accident in some use 
for which it was not lent, then the borrower must make it good ; as if 
the coach be overturned or broken to pieces by the carelessness of youi 
coachman ; or the horse be hired to take a morning's ride upon, and 
you go a hunting with him, or leap him over hedges, or put him into 
your cart or carriage, and he be strained, or staked, or galled, or acci- 
dentally hurt, or drop down dead while you are thus using him, you 
must make satisfaction to the owner. 

The two cases are distinguished by this circumstance : that in one 
case the owner foresees the damage or risk, and therefore consents to 
undertake it; in the other case he does not. 

It is possible that an estate or a house may, during the term of a lease, 
be so increased or diminished in its value as to become worth much 
more or much less than the rent agreed to be paid for it. In some of 
which cases it may be doubted to whom, of natural right, the advantage 
or disadvantage belongs. The rule of justice seems to be this : if the 
alteration might be expected by the parties, the hirer must take the con- 
sequence ; if it could not, the owner. An orchard, or a vineyard, or a 
mine, or a fishery, or a decoy, may this year yield nothing, or next to 
nothing, yet the tenant shall pay his rent ; and if the next year produce 
tenfold the usual profit no more shall be demanded ; because the pro- 
duce is in its nature precarious, and this variation might be expected. 
a an estate in the fens of Lincolnshire, or the Isle of Ely, be overflowed 
with water so as to be incapable of occupation, the tenant, notwithstand- 
ing, is bound by his lease ] because he entered into it with a knowledge 
and foresight of the danger. On the other hand, if by the irruption of 
the sea into a country where it was never known to have come before, 
by the change of the course of a river, the fall of a rock, the breaking 
out of a volcano, the bursting of a moss, the incursions of an enemy, 
or by a mortal contagion among the cattle ] if, by means like these, 
an estate change or lose its value, the loss shall fall upon the owner : 
that is, the tenant shall either be discharged from his agreement, or be 
entitled to an abatement of rent. A house in London, by the building 
of a bridge, the opening of a new road or street, may become ten times 
of irs former value : and, by contrary causes, may be as much reduced 
in value ; here also, as before, the owner, not the hirer, shall be effect- 
ed by the alteration. The reason upon which our determination pro- 
ceeds is this ; that changes such as these, being neither foreseen nor 
provided for by the contracting parties, form no part or condition of the 
contract ] and therefore ought to have the same effect as if no contract 
at a^' had been made (for none was made with respect to them^) that is, 
uiig.iu (u fall upon iiie owner. 



70 CONTRACTS CONCERNING THE 

CHAPTER X. 

CONTRACTS CONCERNING THE LENDING OF MONEY. 

There exists no reason in the law of nature why a man should not 
be paid for the lending of his money, as well as of any other property 
into which the money might be converted. 

The scruples that have been entertained upon this head, and upon 
the foundation of which the receiving of interest or usury (for they for- 
merly meant the same thing,) was once prohibited in almost all Chris- 
tian countries,* arose from a passage in the law of Moses, Deuterono- 
my, xxiii. 19, 20. '' Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; 
usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon 
usury : unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury ; but unto thy 
brother thou shalt not lend upon usury." 

This prohibition is now generally understood to have been intended 
for the Jews alone, as part of the civil or political law of that nation, 
and calculated to preserve among themselves that distribution of pro- 
perty, to which many of their institutions were subservient : as the 
marriage of an heiress within her own tribe ] of a widow who was left 
childless to her husband's brother ] the year of jubilee, when alienated 
estates reverted to the family of the original proprietor : — regulations 
which were never thought to be binding upon any but the common- 
wealth of Israel. 

This interpretation is confirmed, I think, beyond all controversy, by 
the distinction made in a law between a Jew and a foreigner* — "unto 
a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury, but unto thy brother thou 
mayest not lend upon usury ;" a distinction which could hardly have 
been admitted into a law, which the Divine Author intended to be of 
moral and of universal obligation. 

The rate of interest has in most countries been regulated by law. The 
Roman law allowed of twelve pounds per cent., which Justinian redu- 
ced at one stroke to four pounds. A statute of the thirteenth year of 
Queen Elizabeth, w^hich was the first that tolerated the receiving of in- 
terest in England at all, restrained it to ten pounds per cent. ] a statute 
of James the First to eight pounds ; of Charles the Second to six pounds : 
of Queen Anne to five pounds, on pain of forfeiture of treble the value 
of the money lent : at which rate and penalty the matter now stands. 
The policy of these regulations is, to check the power of accumulating 
wealth without industry ; to give encourage:nent to trade, by enabling 
adventurers in it to borrow money at a moderate price ; and of late 
years, to enable the state to borrow the subjects' money itself. 

Compound interest, though forbidden by the law of England, is 



* By a statute of James the First, interest a'bove eight pounds per cent, was prohi 
bited (and consequently under that rate allowed,) with this sage provision, That this 
statute shall not be construed or expounded to allow the practice of usury in point of re 
lis;ion or conscience. 



LENDING OF MONEY. 71 

agreeable enough to natural equity ; for interest detained after it is due, 
becomes, to all intents and purposes, part of the sum lent. 

It is a question which sometimes occurs, how money borrowed in 
one country ought to be paid in another, where the relative value of 
the precious metals is not the same. For example, suppose I borrow 
a hundred guineas in London, where each guinea is worth one-and- 
twenty shillings, and meet my creditor in the East Indies, where a 
guinea is worth no more perhaps than nineteen ; is it a satisfaction of 
the debt to return a hundred guineas, or must I make up so many times 
one-and-twenty shillings '? I should think the latter ; for it must be 
presumed that my creditor, had he not lent me his guineas, would have 
disposed of them in such a manner, as to have now had, in the place 
of them, so many one-and-twenty shillings 5 and the question supposes 
that he neither intended, nor ought to be a suiFerer, by parting with the 
possession of his money to me. 

When the relative value of coin is altered by an act of the state, if 
the alteration would have extended to the identical pieces which were 
lent, it is enough to return an equal number of pieces of the same de- 
nomination, or their present value in any other. As if guineas were 
reduced by act of parliament to twenty shillings, so many twenty shil- 
lings as I borrowed guineas would be a just repayment. It would be 
otherwise if the reduction was owing to a debasement of the coin ] foi 
then respect ought to be had to the comparative value of the old guinea 
and the new. 

Whoever borrows money is bound in conscience to repay it. This 
every man can see ; but every man cannot see, or does not however 
reflect, that he is, in consequence, also bound to use the means necessa- 
ry to enable himself to repay it. '* If he pay the money when he has 
it, or has it to spare, he does all that an honest man can do," and all, 
he imagines, that is required of him ; while the previous measures^ 
which are necessary to furnish him with that money, he makes no part 
of his care, nor observes to be as much his duty as the other ; such as 
selling a family seat or a family estate, contracting his plan of expense, 
laying down his equipage, reducing the number of his servants, or any 
of those humiliating sacrifices, which justice requires of a man in debt, 
the moment he perceives that he has no reasonable prospect of paying 
his debts without them. An expectation which depends upon the con- 
tinuance of his own life, will not satisfy an honest man, if a better pro- 
vision be in his power ] for it is a breach of faith to subject a creditor, 
when we can help it, to the risk of our life, be the event what it will ) 
that not being the security to which credit was given. 

I know few subjects which have been more misunderstood than the 
law which authorizes the imprisonment of insolvent debtors. It has 
been represented as a gratuitous cruelty which contributed nothing to 
the reparation of the creditor's loss, or to the advantage of the commu- 
nity. This prejudice arises principally from considering the sending oi 
a debtor to jail, as an act of private satisfaction to the creditor, instead 
of a public punishment. As an act of satisfaction or revenge, it is al- 
ways wrong in the motive, and often intemperate and undistinguishing 



72 CONTRACTS CONCERNING THE LENDING OF MONEY. 

in the exercise. Consider it as a public punishment, founded upon the 
same reason, and subject to the same rules, as other punishments ] and 
the justice of it, together with the degree to which it should be extend 
ed, and the objects upon whom it may be inflicted, will be apparent 
There are frauds relating to insolvency, against which it is as necessary 
to provide punishment as for any public crimes whatever : as where a 
man gets your money into his possession, and forthwith rifhs away 
with it ; or, what is little better, squanders it in vicious expenses * or 
stakes it at the gaming table ] in the Alley ; or upon wild adventures 
in trade ] or is conscious, at the time he borrows it, that he can never 
repay it ; or wilfully puts it out of his power by profuse living ] or 
conceals his effects, or transfers them by collusion to another : not to 
mention the obstinacy of some debtors, who had rather rot in a jail 
than deliver up their estates ; for, to say the truth, the first absurdity is 
in the law itself, which leaves it in a debtor's power to withhold any 
part of his property from the claim of his creditors. The only question 
is, whether the punishment be properly placed in the hands of an exas- 
perated creditor; for which it may be said, that these frauds are so sub- 
tle and versatile, that nothing but a discretionary power can overtake 
them : and that no discretion is likely to be so well inform.ed, so vigi- 
lant, or so active as that of the creditor. 

It must be remembered, however, that the confinement of a debtor in 
jail is d, punishment ; and that every punishment supposes a crime. To 
pursue, therefore, with the extremity of legal rigor, a sufferer, whom 
the fraud or failure of others, his own want of capacity, or the disap- 
pointments and miscarriages to which all human affairs are subject, 
have reduced to ruin, merely because we are i)rovoked by our loss, and 
seek to relieve the pain we feel by that which we inflict, is repugnant 
not only to humanity but to justice : for it is to pervert a provision of 
law, designed for a different and a salutary purpose, to the gratification 
of private spleen and resentment. Any alteration in these laws which 
could distinguish the degrees of guilt, or convert the seiTice of the in- 
solvent debtor to some public profit, might be an improvement; but any 
considerable mitigation of their rigor, under color of relieving the poor, 
would increase their hardships. For whatever deprives the creditor of 
his power of coercion, deprives him of his security ; and as this must 
add greatly to the difficulty of obtaining credit, the poor, especially the 
lowest sort of tradesmen, are the first who would suffer by such a regu- 
lation. As tradesmen must buy before they sell, you would exclude 
from trade two-thirds of those who now carry it on, if none were ena- 
bled to enter into it without a capital suflicient for prompt payments. 
An advocate, therefore, for the interests of this important class of the 
community, will deem it more eligible, that one out of a thousand 
should be sent to jail by his creditors, than that the nine hundred and 
ninety-nine should be straightened and embarrassed, and many of them 
lie idle, by the want of credit. 



bCRViCE. 73 

CHAPTER XI. 

CONTRACTS OF LABOR. 



Service in this country is, £is it ought to be, voluntary, and by con- 
tract ; and the master's authority extends no farther than the terms or 

equitable construction of the contract will justify. 

The treatment of servants as to diet, discipline, and accommodation, 
the kind and quantity of work to be required of them, the intermissions, 
liberty, and indulgence to be allowed them, must be determined in a 
great measure by custom ; for where the contract involves so many par- 
ticulars, the contracting parties express a few perhaps of the principal, 
and, by mutual understanding, refer the rest to the known custom of 
the country in like cases. 

A servant is not bound to obey the unlawful commands of his mas- 
ter; to minister, for instance, to his unlawful pleasure : or to assist him 
by unlawful practices in his profession ] as in smuggling or adultera- 
ting the articles in which he deals. For the servant is bound by nothing 
but his own promise ; and the obligation of a promise extends not to 
\hings unlawful. 

For the same reason, the master's authority is no justification of the 
servant in doing wrong; for the servant's own promise, upon whicb 
hat authority is founded, would be none. 

Clerks and apprentices ought to be employed entirely in the profes- 
sion or trade which they are intended to learn. Instruction is their 
hire : and to deprive them of the opportunities of instruction, by taking 
ip their time with occupations foreign to their business, is to defraud 
hem of their wages. 

The master is responsible for what a servant does in the ordinary 
course of his employment ] for it is done under a general authority 
committed to him, which is in justice equivalent to a specific direction. 
Thus, if I pay money to a bankers clerk, the banker is accountable, 
but not if I had paid it to his butler or his footman, whose business it 
is not to receive money. Upon the same principle, if I once send a ser- 
vant to take up goods upon credit, whatever goods he afterward takes 
up at the same shop, so long as he continues in my service, are justly 
'chargeable to my account. 

The law of this country goes great lengths in intending a kind of con- 
currence in the master, so as to charge him with the consequences of 
his servant's conduct. If an innkeepers serv^ant rob his guests, the 
innkeeper must make restitution : if a farriers serv'ant lame a horse, the 
farrier must answer for the damage : and still farther, if your coach- 
man or carter drive over a passenger in the road, the passenger may re- 
cover from you a satisfaction for the hurt he suffers. But these deter- 
minations stand, I think, rather upon the authority of the law, than 
any principle of natural justice. 

D 



74 SERVICE. 

There is a carelessness and facility in "giving characters," as it is 
called, of servants, especially when given in writing, or according to some 
established form, which, to speak plainly of it, is a cheat upon those 
wiio accept them. They are given with so little reserve and veracity, 
^' that I should as soon depend," says the author of the Rambler, " upon 
an acquittal at the Old Bailey, by way of recommendation of a servant's 
honesty, as upon one of these characters." It is sometimes careless- 
ness ; and sometimes also to get rid of a bad servant without the unea 
siness of a dispute ] for which nothing can be pleaded but the most un- 
generous of all excuses, that the person whom we deceive is a stranger. 

There is a conduct the reverse of this, but more injurious, because the 
injury falls where there is no remedy * I mean the obstructing of a ser- 
vant's advancement because you are unwilling to spare his service. 
To stand in the way of your servant's interest is a poor return for his 
fidelity ] and affords slender encouragement for good behavior in this 
numerous and thei'efore important part of the community. It is a piece 
of injustice which, if practiced toward an equal, the law of honor would 
lay hold of : as it is, it is neither uncommon nor disreputable. 

A master of a family is culpable if he permit any vices among his 
domestics which he might restrain by due discipline, and a proper inter- 
ference. This results from the general obligation to prevent misery 
when in our power ; and the assurance which we have that vice and 
misery at the long run go together. Care to maintain in his family a 
sense of virtue and religion received the Divine approbation in the per- 
son of Abraham, Gen. xviii. 19. — " I know him, that he will command 
his children, and kis household after him ] and they shall keep the way 
of the Lord, to do justice and judgment." And indeed no authority 
seems so well adapted to this purpose, as that of masters of families ; 
because none operates upon the subjects of it with an influence so im- 
mediate and constant. 

What the Christian Scriptures have delivered concerning the relation 
and reciprocal duties of masters and servants, breathes a spirit of libe- 
rality very little known in ages when servitude was slavery ] and which 
flowed from a habit of contemplating mankind under the common rela- 
tion in which they stand to their Creator, and with respect to their in- 
terest in another existence :* '' Servants, be obedient to them that are 
your masters, according to the flesh, with fear and trembling ] in single- 
ness of your heart, as unto Christ ; not with eye-service, as men-pleasers, 
but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; 
with good will, doing service as to the Lord, and not men ; knowing that 
whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the 
Lord, whether he be bond or free. And ye masters, do the same thing 
unto them, forbearing threatening; knowing that your Master also is 
in heaven ; neither is there respect of persons with him." The idea of 
referring their service to God, of considering him as having appointed 
them their task, that they were doing his wall, and were to look to him 



♦Eph. vi. 5—9. 



COMMISSIONS. 75 

for their reward was new ; and affords a greater security to the master 
than any inferior principle, because it tends to produce a steady and 
cordial obedience, in the place of that constrained service, which can 
never be trusted out of sight, and which is justly enough called eye- 
service. The exhortation to masters, to keep in view their own sub- 
jection and accountableness, was no less seasonable. • 



CHAPTER Xir. 

CONTRACTS OF LABOR. 
COMMISSIONS. 

Whoever undertakes another man's business makes it his own, that 
is, promises to employ upon it the same care, attention, and diligence 
that he would do if it were actually his own : for he knows that the 
business was committed to him with that expectation. And he pro- 
mises nothing more than this. Therefore, an agent is not obliged to wait, 
inquire, solicit, ride about the country, toil, or study, while there remains 
a possibility of benefiting his employer. If he exert so much of his 
activity, and use such caution, as the value of the business, in his judg- 
ment, deserves; that is, as he would have thought sufficient if the same 
interest of his own had been at stake, he has discharged his duty, al- 
though it should afterward turn out that by more activity and longer 
perseverance he might have concluded the business with greater ad- 
vantage. 

This rule defines the duty of factors, stewards, attorneys, and advo- 
cates. 

One of the chief difficulties of an agent's situation is, to know how 
far he may depart from his instructions, when, from some change or 
discovery in the circumstances of his commission, he sees reason to be- 
lieve that his employer, if he were present, would alter his intention. 
The latitude allowed to agents in this respect will be different, according 
as the commission was confidential or ministerial ] and according as the 
general rule and nature of the service require a prompt and precise obe- 
dience to orders, or not. An attorney, sent to treat for an estate, if he 
found out a flaw in the title, would desist from proposing the price he 
was directed to propose ] and very properly. On the other hand, if the 
commander-in-chief of an army detach an officer under him upon a par- 
ticular service, which service turns out more difficult or less expedient 
than was supposed, insomuch that the officer is convinced that his com- 
mander, if he were acquainted with the true state in which the affair is 
found, would recall his orders \ yet must this officer, if he cannot wait 
for fresh directions without prejudice to the expedition he is sent upon, 
pursue, at all hazards, those which he brought out with him. 

What is trusted to an agent may be lost or damaged in his hands by 
misfortune. An agent who acts without pay is clearly not answerable 



76 PARTNERSHIP. 

for the loss ; for, if he give his labor for nothing, it cannot be presumed 
that he gave also security for the success of it. If the agent be hired 
to the business, the question will depend upon the apprehension of the 
parties at the time of making the contract : which apprehension of theirs 
must be collected chiefly from custom, by which, probably, it was guided. 
Whether a public carrier ought to account for goods sent by him ] the 
o^^ner or master of a ship for the cargo ; the post-office for letters, or 
bills enclosed in letters, where the loss is not imputed to any fault or 
neglect of theirs ] are questions of this sort. Any expression which by 
implication amounts to a promise, will be binding upon the agent, with- 
out custom ; as where the proprietors of a stage-coach advertise that 
they will not be accountable for money, plate, or jewels, this makes 
them accountable for everything else ; or where the price is too much 
for the labor, part of it may be considered as a premium for insurance. 
On the other hand, any caution on the part of the owner to guard against 
danger is evidence that he considers the risk to be his ; as cutting a 
bank bill in two, to send by the post at difterent times. 

Universally, unless a 'promise^ either express or tacit, can be proved 
against the agent, the loss must fall upon the owner. 

The agent may be a sufferer in his own person or property by the 
business which he undertakes ; as where one goes a journey for an- 
other, and lames his horse, or is hurt himself by a fall upon the road ; 
can the agent in such case claim a compensation for the misfortune ? 
Unless the same be provided for by express stipulation, the agent is not 
entitled to any compensation from his employer on that account ] for 
where the danger is not foreseen, there can be no reason to believe that 
the employer engaged to indemnify the agent against it : still less where 
it is foreseen ] for whoever knowingly undertakes a dangerous employ- 
ment, in common construction, takes upon himself the danger and the 
consequences ; as where a fireman undertakes for a reward to rescue a 
box of writings from the flames ] or a sailor to bring off a passenger 
from a ship in a storm. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

CONTRACTS OF LABOR. 
PARTNERSHIP. 

I KNOW nothing upon the subject of partnership that requires ex- 
planation, but in what manner the profits are to be divided, where one 
partner contributes money and the other labor ] which is a common 
case. 

Rule. From the stock of the partnership deduct the sum advanced, 
and divide the remainder between the moneyed partner and the laboring 
partner, in the proportion of the interest of the money to the wages of 
the laborer, allowing such a rate of interest as money might be borrow 



OFFICES. 77 

ed for upon the same security, and suck wages as a journeyman would 

require for the same labor and trust. 

Example. A. advances a thousand pounds, but knows nothing of 
the business; B. produces no money, but has been brought up to the 
business, and undertakes to conduct it. At the end of the year the stock 
and the effects of the partnership amount to twelve hundred pounds ] 
consequently there are two hundred pounds to be divided. Now, no- 
body would lend money upon the events of the business succeeding, 
which is A.'s security, under six per cent ] therefore A. must be allow- 
ed sixty pounds for the interest of his money. B., before he engaged 
in the partnership, earned thirty pounds a year in the same employment ] 
his labor, therefore, ought to be valued at thirty pounds : and the two 
hundred pounds must be divided between the partners in the proportion 
of sixty to thirty ; that is, A. must receive one hundred and thirty- three 
pounds six shillings and eight pence, and B. sixty-six pounds thirteen 
shillings and fourpence. 

If there be nothing gained, A. loses his interest, and B. his labor; 
which is right. If the original stock be diminished, by this rule B. 
loses only his labor, as before ; whereas A. loses his interest and part 
of the principal ; for which eventful disadvantage A. is compensated by 
having the interest of his money computed at six per cent, in the divi- 
sion of the profits, when there are any. 

It is true, that the division of the profit is seldom forgotten in the con- 
stitution of the partnership, and is therefore commonly settled by ex- 
press agreements : but these agreements, to be equitable, should pursue 
the principle of the rule here laid down. 

AU the partners are bound to what any one of them does in the course 
of the business : for, quoad hoc each partner is considered as an au- 
thorized agent for the rest 



CHAPTER XIV. 

CONTRACTS OF LABOR. 
OFFICES. 

In many offices, as schools, fellowships of colleges, professorships 
of universities, and the like, there is a twofold contract ; one with the 
founder, the other with the electors. 

The contract with the founder obliges the incumbent of the office to 
discharge every duty appointed by the charter, statutes, deed of gift, or 
will of the founder ; because the endowment was given and conse- 
quently accepted, for that purpose, and upon those conditions. 

The contract with the electors extends this obligation to all duties 
that have been customarily connected with and reckoned a part of the 
office, though not prescribed by the founder ; for the electors expect 
from the person they choose all the duties --'hch his predecessors have 



78 OFFICES. 

discharged ; and as the person elected cannot he ignorant of their ex- 
pectation, if he meant to have refused this condition, he ought to have 
apprised them of his objection. 

And here let it be observed, that the electors can excuse the conscience 
of the person elected, from this last class of duties alone ] because this 
class results from a contract to which the electors and the person elect- 
ed are the only parties. The other class of duties results from a differ- 
ent contract. 

It is a question of some magnitude and difficulty what offices may be 
conscientiously supplied by a deputy. 

We will state the several objections to the substitution of a deputy ; 
and then it will be understood, that a deputy may be allowed in all 
cases to which these objections do not apply. 

An office may not be discharged by a deputy. 

1 . Where a particular confidence is reposed in the judgment and con- 
duct of the person appointed to it ; as the office of a steward, guardian, 
judge, commander-in-chief by land or sea. 

2. Where the custom hinders ] as in the case of schoolmasters, tutors, 
and of commissions in the army or navy. 

3. Where the duty cannot, from its nature, be so well performed by 
a deputy ] as the deputy-governor of a province may not possess the 
legal authority, or the actual influence of his principal. 

4. When some inconveniency would result to the service in general 
from the permission of deputies in such cases : for example, it is pro- 
bable that military merit would be much discouraged, if the duties be- 
longing to commissions in the army were generally allowed to be exe- 
cuted by substitutes. 

The non-residence of the parochial clergy who supply the duty of 
their benefices by curates, is worthy of a more distinct consideration. 
And in order to draw the question upon this case to a point, we will 
suppose the officiating curate, to dicharge every duty which his princi- 
pal, were he present, would be bound to discharge, and in a manner 
equally beneficial to the parish : under which circumstances, the only 
objection to the absence of the principal, at least the only one of the 
foregoing objections, is the last. 

And, in my judgment, the force of this oT)jection will be much dimi- 
nished, if the absent rector or vicar be, in the mean time, engaged in 
any function or employment of equal or of greater importance to the 
general interest of religion. For the whole revenue of the national 
church may properly enough be considered as a common fund for the 
support of the national religion ; and if a clergyman be serving the 
cause of Christianity and Protestantism, it can make little diflerence, out 
of what particular portion of this fund, that is, by the tithes and glebe 
of what particular parish, his service be requited ; any more than it can 
prejudice the king's service, that an officer who has signalized his merit 
in America should be rewarded with the government of a fort or castle 
in Ireland, which he never saw ] but for the custody of which, proper 
provision is made, and care taken. 

Upon the principle thus explained, this indulgence is due to none 



LIES. 79 

more than to those who are occupied in cultivating and communicating 
religious knowledge, or the sciences subsidiary to religion. 

This way of considering the revenues of the church as a common 
fund for the same purpose is the more equitable, as the value of parti- 
cular preferments bears no proportion to the particular charge or labor. 

But when a man draws upon this fund whose studies and employ- 
ments bear no relation to the object of it, and who is no farther a min- 
ister of the Christian religion than as a cockade makes a soldier, it seems 
a misapplication little better than a robbery. 

And to those who have the management of such matters I submit this 
question, whether the impoverishment of the fund, by converting the 
best share of it into annuities for the gay and illiterate youth of great 
families, threatens not to starve and stifle the little clerical merit that is 
left among us 1 

All legal dispensations from residence proceeds upon the supposition, 
that the absentee is detained from his living by some engagement of 
equal or of greater public importance. Therefore, if, in a case where 
no such reason can with truth be pleaded, it be said that this question 
regards a right of property, and that all right of property awaits the 
disposition of law; that, therefore, if the law, which gives a man the 
emoluments of a living, excuse him from residing upon it, he is excu- 
sed in conscience ] we answer, that the law does not excuse him hy in- 
tention, and that all other excuses are fraudulent. 



CHAPTER XV. 

LIES. 

A LIE is a breach of promise : for whoever seriously addresses his 
discourse to another, tacitly promises to speak the truth because he 
knows that the truth is expected. 

Or the obligation of veracity may be made out from the direct ill con- 
sequences of lying to social happiness. Which consequences consist, 
either in some specific; injury to particular individuals, or in the de- 
struction of that confidence which is essential to the intercourse of hu- 
man life ] for which latter reason, a lie may be pernicious in its gene- 
ral tendency, and therefore criminal, though it produce no particular oi 
visible mischief to anyone. 

There are falsehoods which are not lies' ] that is, which are not cri- 
minal ; as, 

1 . Where no one is deceived ] which is the case in parables, fables, 
novels, jests, tales to create mirth, ludicrous embellishments of a story, 
where the declared design of the speaker is not to inform but to divert : 
compliments in the subscription of a letter, a servant's rZg«i/mg his mas 
ter, a prisoner's pleading not guilty, an advocate asserting the justice, 
or his belief of the justice of his client's cause. In such instances no 



80 LIES. 

confidence is destroyed, because none was reposed ; no promise to speak 
the truth is violated, because none was given, or understood to be given. 

2. Where the person to whom you speak has no right to know the 
truth, or more properly, where little or no inconveniency results from 
the want of confidence in such cases j as where you tell a falsehood to 
a madman for his own advantage ] to a robber to conceal your proper- 
ty ] to an assassin to defeat or divert him from his purpose. The par- 
ticular consequence is by the supposition beneficial : and as to the ge- 
neral consequence, the worst that can happen is, that the madman, the 
robber, the assassin will not trust you again ] which (besides that the 
first is incapable of deducing regular conclusions from having been 
once deceived, and the last two not hkely to come a second time in your 
way) is sufficiently compensated by the immediate benefit which you 
propose ly the falsehood. 

It is upon this principle that, by the laws of war, it is allowed to de- 
ceive an enemy by feints, false colors,* spies, false intelligence, and the 
like ] but by no means in treaties, truces, signals of capitulation or sur- 
render : and the difference is that the former suppose hostilities to con- 
tinue, the latter are calculated to terminate or suspend them. In the 
conduct of war, and while the war continues, there is no use, or rather 
no place for confidence between the contending parties * but in what- 
ever relates to the termination of war, the most religious fidelity is ex- 
pected, because without it wars could not cease nor the victors be se- 
cure, but by the entire destruction of the vanquished. 

Many people indulge, in serious discourse, a habit of fiction and ex- 
aggeration iii tile accounts they give of themselves, of their acquaint- 
ance, or of the extraordinary things which they have seen or heard ; 
and so long as the facts they relate are indifferent, and their narratives, 
though false, are inoffensive, it may seem a superstitious regard to truth 
to censure them merely for truth's sake. 

In the first place, it is almost impossible to pronounce beforehand with 
certainty, concerning any lie, that it is inofifensive. Volet irrevocabile ; 
and coiiecls sometimes accretions in its flight, which entirely change its 
nature. It may owe possibly its mischief to the officiousness or mis- 
representation of those who circulate it : but the mischief is, neverthe- 
less, m some degree chargeable upon the original editor. 

In the next place, this liberty in conversation defeats its own end. 
Much of the pleasure and all the benefit of conversation depends upon 
our opinion of the speaker's veracity : for which this rule leaves no 
foundation. That faith indeed of a hearer must be extremely perplexed 
who considers the speaker, or beheves that the speaker considers him- 
self, as under no obligation to adhere to truth, but according to the par- 
ticular importance of what he relates. 

But besides and above both these reasons, white lies always introduce 



* There have been two or three instances of late, of English ships decoying an ene- 
my into their power, by counteifeitin?: signals of distress ; an artifice which ought to 
be reprobated by the common indignation of mankind ! for, a few examples of cap- 
tures effected by this stratagem would put an end to that promptitude in affording as- 
si ta'ice o h Y)i in distress, which i<* the best virtue in a seafaring character, and by 
which t e perils of navigation are diminished to all— .\. D. 177o 



OATHS. 81 

others of a darker complexion. I have seldom known any one who 
deserted truth in trifles, that could be trusted in matters of importance. 
Nice distinctions are out of the question, upon occasions which, like 
those of speech, return every hour. The habit, therefore, of lying, when 
once formed, is easily extended to serve the designs of malice or inte- 
rest ; like all habits, it spreads indeed of itself. 

Pious frauds, as they are improperly enough called, pretended inspi- 
rations, forged books, counterfeit miracles, are impositions of a more 
serious nature. It is possible that they may sometimes, though seldom, 
have been set up and encouraged with a design to do good ] but the 
good they aim at requires that the belief of them should be perpetual, 
which is hardly possible : and the detection of the fraud is sure to dis- 
parage the credit of all pretensions to the same nature. Christianity 
has suffered more injury from this cause than from all other causes put 
together. 

As there may be falsehoods which are not lies, so there may be lies 
without literal or direct falsehood. An opening is always left for this 
species of prevarication, when the literal and grammatical signification 
of a sentence is different from the popular and customary meaning. It 
is the wilful deceit that makes the lie : and we wilfully deceive when 
our expressions are not true in the sense in which we believe the hearer 
to apprehend them : besides that it is absurd to contend for any sense 
of words in opposition to usage ; for all senses of all words are founded 
upon usage, and upon nothing else. 

Or a man may act a lie ; as by pointing his finger in a wrong direc- 
tion when a traveller inquires of him his road ] or when a tradesman 
shuts up his windows to induce his creditors to believe that he is abroad; 
for to all moral purposes, and therefore as to veracity, speech and action 
are the same ', speech being only a mode of action. 

Or, lastly, there may be lies of omission. A writer of English history, 
who, in his account of the reign of Charles the First, should wilfully 
suppress any evidence of that prince's despotic measures and designs, 
might be said to lie ; for, by entitling his book a History of England^ 
he engages to relate the whole truth of the history, or at least, all that 
he knows of it. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

OATHS. 

1 . Forms of Oaths. 

2. Signification. 

3. Lawfulness. 

4. Obligation. 

5. What Oaths do not hind. 

6. In what sense Oaths are to be interpreted. 

1. The forms of oaths, like other religious ceremonies, have in all 
D2 



S2 OATHS. 

ages been various ) consistingj however, for the most part of some bodily 
action,* and of a prescribed form of words. Among the Jews, the 
juror held up his right hand toward heaven, which explains a passage 
in the 144th Psalm • " Whose mouth speaketh vanity, and their rigfit 
hand is a right hand of falsehood. ^^ The same form is retained in Scot- 
land still. Among the same Jews an oath of fidelity was taken^, by 
the servant's putting his hand under the thigh of his lord, as Eliezer did 
to Abraham, Gen. xxiv. 2; from whence, with no great variation, is 
derived perhaps the form of doing homage at this day, by putting the 
hands between the knees, and within the hands of the liege. 

Among the Greeks and Romans the form varied with the subject and 
occasion of the oath. In private contracts the parties took hold of each 
other's hand, while they swore to the performance ; or they touched the 
altar of the god by whose divinity they swore. . Upon more solemn oc- 
casions it was the custom to slay a victim ; and the beast being struck 
down with certain ceremonies and invocations, gave birth to the expres- 
sions TEfiveiv opKov, ferire pactum ; and to our English phrase, trans- 
lated from these, of '' striking a bargain." 

The forms of oaths in Christian countries are also very different ] but 
m no country in the world, I believe, worse contrived either to convey 
the meaning or impress the obligation of an oath, than in our own. The 
juror with us, after repeating the promise or affirmation which the oath 
is intended to confirm, adds, " So help me God f or more frequently the 
substance of the oath is repeated to the juror by the officer or magistrate 
who administers it, adding in the conclusion, " So help you God." The 
energy of the sentence resides in the particle so ; so, that is, hac lege, 
upon condition of my speaking the truth or performing this promise, 
and not otherwise, may God help me. The juror, while he hears or 
repeats the words of the oath, holds his right hand upon a Bible or other 
book containing the four Gospels. The conclusion of the oath some- 
times runs, "Itame Deus adjuvet, et haec sancta evangelia," or, "So 
help me God, and the contents of this book ;" which last clause forms 
a connexion between the words and action of the juror that before was 
wanting. The juror then kisses the book : the kiss, however, seems 
rather an act of reverence to the contents of the book (as, in the popish 
ritual, the priest kisses the Gospel before he reads it,) than any part of 
the oath. 

This obscure and elliptical form, together with the levity and frequen- 
cy with which it is administered, has brought about a general inadver- 
tency to the obhgation of oaths : which, both in a religious and politi- 
cal view, is much to be lamented ; and it merits public consideration, 
whether the requiring of oaths on so many frivolous occasions, espe- 
cially in the customs, and in the qualification for petty offices, has any 



* It is commonly thought that oaths ore denominated corporal oatha from the bodily 
action which accompanies them, of laying the right hand upon a book containing the 
four Gospels. This oninion, however, appears to bo a mistake ; for the term is bor- 
rowed from the ancient usage of touching, on tliese occasions, tlie cO^yorale or cloth 
which covered tho consecrated elements. 



OATHS. 83 

Other effect than to make them cheap in the minds of the people. A 
pound of tea cannot travel regularly from the ship to the consumer 
without costing half a dozen oaths at the least ; and the same security 
for the due discharge of their office, namely, that of an oath, is required 
from a churchwarden and an archbishop, from a petty constable and the 
chief-justice of England. Let the law continue its own sanctions, if they 
be thought requisite ; but let it spare the solemnity of an oath. And 
where, from the want of something better to depend upon, it is neces- 
sary to accept men's own word or own account, let it annex to preva- 
rication penalties proportioned to the public mischief of the offence. 

2. But whatever be the form of an oath, the signification is the same. 
It is the " calling upon God to witness, i. e. to take notice of what we 
say;" and it is " invoking his vengeance or renouncing his favor, if 
what we say be false, or w^hat we promise be not performed.'' 

3 . Quakers and Moravians refuse to swear upon any occasion ; 
founding their scruples concerning the lawfuhiess of oaths upon our 
Saviour's prohibition, Matt. v. 34. " I say unto you, Swear not at all." 

The answer which we give to this objection cannot be understood, 
without first stating the whole passage : '-Ye have heard that it hath 
been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but 
shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths. But I say unto you, Swear 
not at all; neither by heaven, for it is God's throne : nor by the earth, 
for it is his footstool ; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the 
great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst 
not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, 
Yea, yea ; Nay, nay : for whatsoever is more than these, cometh oi 
evil." 

To reconcile with this passage of Scripture the practice of swearing 
or of taking oaths w^hen required by law, the following observations 
must be attended to : 

1 . It does not appear that swearing " by heaven," '• by the earth," 
'• by Jerusalem," or ^ by their own head," w^as a form of swearing ever 
made use of among the Jews in judicial oaths : and consequently, it is 
not probable that they were judicial oaths v/hich Christ had in his mind 
when he mentioned those instances. 

2. As to the seeming universality of the prohibition, " Swear not at 
all," the emphatic clause " not at all " is to be read in connexion with 
what follows ; " not at all," i. e. neither " by the heaven," nc^r " by the 
earth," nor '• by Jerusalem," nor "by thy head;" " not at alV^ does 
not mean upon no occasion, but by none of these forms. Our Saviour's 
argument seems to suppose that the people to whom he spake made a 
distinction between swearing directly by the '• name of God," and swear- 
ing by those inferior objects of veneration, " the heavens," '• the earth," 
"Jerusalem," or " their own head." In opposition to which distinction 
he tells them, that on account of the relation which these things bore to 
the Supreme Being, to swear by any of them was in effect and sub- 
stance to swear by him ; '• by heaven, for it is his throne; by the earth, 
for it is his footstool ; by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King ; 
by thy head, for it is his workmanship, not thine'— thon canst not make 



^^4 OATHS. 

one hair white or hlack :" for which reason he says, " Swear not at 
all,^' that is, neither directly hy God, nor indirectly by anything related 
to him. This interpretation is greatly confirmed by a passage in the 
twenty-third chapter of the same Gospel, where a similar distinction 
made by the Scribes and Pharisees, is replied to in the same manner. 

3. Our Saviour himself being " adjured by the living God," to de- 
clare whether he was the Christ, the Son of God, or not, condescended 
to answer the high-priest, without making any objection to the oath 
(for such it was) upon which he examined him. — " God is my witness,'^ 
says St. Paul to the Romans, " that without ceasing I make mention of 
you in my prayers :" and to the Caimthians still more strongly, "i call God 
for a record upon my soul, that to spare you, I came not as yet to Corinth." 
Both these expressions contain the nature of oaths. The Epistle to the 
Hebrews speaks of the custom of swearing judicially, v/ithout any mark 
of censure or disapprobation : " Men verily swear by the greater ] and 
an oath, for confirm.ation. is to them an end of all strife." 

Upon the strength of these reasons, we explain our Saviour's words 
to relate, not to judicial oaths, but to the practice of vain, wanton, and 
unauthorized swearing in common discourse. St. James's words, chap. 
V. 12, are not so strong as our Saviours, and therefore admit the same 
explanation with more ease. 

IV. Oaths are nugatory, that is. carry with them no proper force of 
obligation, unless we believe that God will punish false swearing with 
more severity than a simple lie or breach of promise ) for which be- 
lief there are the following reasons : — 

1 . Perj ury is a sin of greater deliberation. The juror has the thought 
of God and of religion upon his mind at the time ; at least, there are 
very few who can shake them off entirely. He offends, therefore, if he 
do offend, with a high hand ; in the face, that is, and in defiance of the 
sanctions of religion. His offence implies a disbelief or contempt of 
God's knov/ledge, povv^er, and justice ; which cannot be said of a he, 
where there is nothing to carry the mind to an^r reflection upon the 
Deity or the Divine attributes at all. 

2. Perjury violates a superior confidence. Mankind must trust to 
one another • and they have nothing better to trust to than one ano- 
ther's oath. Hence legal adjudications, which govern and affect every 
right and interest on this side of the grave, of necessity proceed and de- 
pend upon oaths. Perjury, therefore, in its general consequence, strikes 
at the security of reputation, property, and even of life itself. A lie 
cannot do the same mischief, because the same credit is not given to it.* 

3. God directed the Israelites to swear by his name^f and was pleas- 
ed, ^' in order to show the immutability of his own counsel,"! to con- 
firm his covenant with that people by an oath : neither of which it is 
probable he would have done, had he not intended to represent oaths 

* Except, indeed, where a Quaker's or Moravian's affirmation is accepted in the 
place of an oath ; in which case a lie partakes, so far as this reason extends, of the 
nature and guilt of perjury. 

t Deut. vi. 13 ; X. 20. t Heb. vi. J7. 



OATH IN EVIDENCE. 85 

as having some meaning and effect beyond the obligation of a bare 
promise ; which effect must be owing to the severer punishment witt 
which he will vindicate the authority of oaths. 

V. Promissory oaths are not binding where the promise itself woul/ 
not be so ; for the several cases of which, see the Chapter of Promises 

VI. As oaths are designed for the security of the imposer, it is mani 
fest that they must be interpreted and performed in the sense in whicl 
the imposer intends them ; otherwise, they afford no security to him 
And this is the meaning and reason of the rule, " jurare in animum im 
ponentis ;" which rule the reader is desired to carry along with him. 
while we proceed to consider certain particular oaths, which are eithei 
of greater importance, or more likely to fall in our way, than others. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

OATH IN EVIDENCE. 

The witness " swears to speak the truth, the whole truth, and 
nothing but the truth touching the matter in question." 

Upon which it may be observed, that the designed concealment of 
any truth, which relates to the matter in agitation, is as much a viola- 
tion of the oath as to testify a positive falsehood : and this, whether 
the witness be interrogated as to that particular point or not. For when 
the person to be examined is sworn upon a voir dire, that is, in order to 
inquire whether he ought to be admitted to give evidence in the cause 
at all, the form runs thus : " You shall true answer make to all such 
questions as shall be asked you :" but when he comes to be sworn in 
chief, he swears " to speak the whole truth," without restraining it, as 
before, to the questions that shall be asked : which difference shows 
that the law intends, in this latter case, to require of the witness that 
he give a complete and unreserved account of what he knows of the 
subjecUof the trial, whether the questions proposed to him reach the 
extent of his knowledge or not. So that if it be inquired of the witness 
afterward, why he did not inform the court so and so, it is not a suffi- 
cient, though a very common answer, to say, " because it was never 
asked me." 

I know but one exception to this rule ; which is, when a full dis- 
covery of the truth tends to accuse the witness himself of some legal 
crime. The law of England constrains no man to become his own ac- 
cuser ; consequently imposes the oath of testimony with this tacit reser- 
vation. But the exception must be confined to legal crimes. A point 
of honor, of delicacy, or of reputation, may make a witness backward 
to disclose some circumstance with which he is acquainted ; but will 
in nowise justify his concealment of the truth, unless it could be shown 
that the law which imposes the oath intended to allow this indulgence 
to such motives. The exception of which we are speaking is also 
withdrawn by a compact between the magistrate and the witness, wheo 



86 OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 

an accomplice is admitted to give evidence against the partners of his 
crime. 

Tenderness to the prisoner, aUhough a specious apology for conceal- 
ment, is no just excuse : for if this plea be thought sufficient, it takes 
the administration of penal justice out of the hands of judges and ju- 
ries, and makes it depend upon the temper of prosecutors and wit- 
nesses. 

Questions may be asked, which are irrelative to the cause, which 
affect the witness himself, or some third person ] in which, and in all 
cases where the witness doubts of the pertinency and propriety of the 
question, he ought to refer his doubts to the court. The answer of the 
court, in relaxation of the oath, is authority enough to the witness ; for 
the law which imposes the oath may remit what it will of the obliga- 
tion ) and it belongs to the court to declare what the mind of the law is. 
Nevertheless, it cannot be said universally, that the answer of the court 
is conclusive upon the conscience of the witness * for his obligation de- 
pends upon what he apprehended, at the time of taking the oath, to be 
the design of the law in imposing it, and no after requisition or expla- 
nation by the court can carry the obligation beyond that. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. 

" I DO sincerely promise and swear, that I will be faithful, and bear 
true a//gg-za?icg to his Majesty King George.". Formerly the oath of 
allegiance ran thus : '' I do promise to be true and faithful to the king 
and his heirs, and truth and faith to bear, of life and limb, and terrene 
honor ] and not to know or hear of any ill or damage intended him, 
without defending him therefrom f and was altered at the Revolution 
to the present form. So that the present oath is a relaxation of the old 
one. And as the oath was intended to ascertain, not so mucluthe ex- 
tent of the subject's obedience, as the person to whom it was due, the 
legislature seems to have wrapped up its meaning upon the former 
point, in a word purposely made choice of for its general and indeter- 
minate signification. 

It will be most convenient to consider, first, what the oath excludes as 
inconsistent with it ; secondly, what it permits. 

1 . The oath excludes all intention to support the claim or pretensions 
of any other person or persons to the crown and government, than the 
reigning sovereign. A .Jacobite, who is persuaded of the Pretender's 
fight to the crown, and who moreover designs to join with the adhe- 
rents to that cause to assert this right, whenever a proper opportunity 
with a reasonable prospect of success presents itself, cannot take the 
oath of allegiance ; or, if he could, the oath of abjuration follows, 
which contains an express renunciation of all opinions in favor of the 
edaim of the exiled family. 



OATH OF ALLEGIANCE. > 87 

2. The oath excludes all design, at the time, of attempting to depose 
the reigning prince, for any reason whatever. Let the justice of the 
Revolution be what it would, no honest man could have taken even 
the present oath of allegiance to James the Second who entertained, 
at the time of taking it, a design of joining in the measures which were 
entered into to dethrone him. 

3. The oath forbids the taking up of arms against the reigning prince, 
with views of private advancement, or from motives of personal resent- 
ment or dislike. It is possible to happen in this, what frequently hap- 
pens in despotic governments, that an ambitious general, at the head of 
the military force of the nation, might by a conjuncture of fortunate 
circumstances, and a great ascendancy over the minds of the soldiery, 
depose the prince upon the throne, and make way to it for himself, oi 
for some creature of his own. A person in this situation would be 
withholden from such an attempt by the oath of allegiance, if he paid 
regard to it. If there were any who engaged in the rebellion of the 
year forty-five, with the expectation of titles, estates, or preferment; 
or because they were disappointed, and thought themselves neglected 
and ill used at court ; or because they entertained a family animosity, 
or personal resentment, against the king, the favorite, or the minister ; 
—if any were induced to take up arms by these motives, they added 
to the many crimes of an unprovoked rebellion that of wilful and cor- 
rupt perjury. If, in the late American war, the same motives deter- 
mined others to connect themselves with that opposition, their part in 
it was chargeable with perfidy and falsehood to their oath, whatever 
was the justice of the opposition itself, or however well founded their 
own complaints might be of private injury. 

We are next to consider what the oath of allegiance permits, or does 
not require. 

1 . It permits resistance to the king, when his ill behavior or imbe- 
cility is such as to make resistance beneficial to the community. It 
may fairly be presumed that the Convention Parliament, which intro- 
duced the oath in its present form, did not intend, by imposing it, to ex- 
clude all resistance, since the members of that legislature had many of 
them recently taken up arms against James the Second, and the veiy 
authority by which they sat together was itself the effect of a success- 
ful opposition to an acknowledged sovereign. Some resistance, there- 
fore, was meant to be allowed \ and, if any, it must be that which has 
the public interest for its object. 

2. The oath does not require obedience to such commands of the 
king as are unauthorized by law. No such obedience is implied by the 
terms of the oath : the fidelity there promised is intended of fidelity in 
opposition to his enemies, and not in opposition to law 3 and allegiance 
at the utmost, can only signify obedience to lawful commands. There- 
fore, if the king should issue a proclamation, levying money, or impos- 
ing any service or restraint upon the subject, beyond what the crown is 
empowered by law to enjoin, there would exist no sort of obligation to 
obey such a proclamation, in consequence of having taken the oath of 
allegiance. 



88 < OATH AGAINSl BRIBERY. 

3. The oath does not require that we should continue our allegiance 
to the king, after he is actually and absolutely deposed, driven into exile, 
carried away captive, or otherwise rendered incapable of exercising 
the regal office, whether by his fault or without it. The promise of al- 
legiance implies, and is understood by all parties, to suppose that the 
person to whom the promise is made continues king ; — continues, that 
is, to exercise the power, and afford the protection, which belongs to the 
office of king : for it is the possession of this power which makes such 
a particular person the object of the oath ; without it, why should I 
swear allegiance to this man, rather than to any man in the kingdom ? 
Besides which, the contrary doctrine is burthened with this consequence, 
that every conquest, revolution of government, or disaster which befalls 
the person of the prince, must be followed by perpetual and irremedia* 
ble anarchy. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

OATH AGAINST BRIBERY IN THE ELECTION OF MEMBERS OF 
PARLIAMENT. 

" I DO swear I have not received, or had, by myself, or any person 
whatsoever in trust for me, or for my use and benefit, directly or indi- 
rectly, any sum or sums of money, office, place, or employment, gift, or re- 
ward, or any promise or security for a-ny money, office, employment, or 
gift, in order to give my vote at this election." 

The several contrivances to evade this oath, such as the electors ac- 
cepting money under color of borrowing it, and giving a promissory 
note, or other security for it, which is cancelled after the election ; receiv- 
ing money from a stranger, or a person in disguise, or out of a drawer, 
or purse, left open for the purpose 3 or promises of money to be paid 
after the election ; or stipulating for a place, living, or other private ad- 
vantage of any kind — if they escape the legal penalties of perjury, in- 
cur the moral guilt : for they are manifestly w^ithin the mischief and 
design of the statute which imposes the oath, and within the terms in- 
deed of the oath itself ; for the word *• indirectly " is inserted on purpose 
to comprehend such cases as these. 



CHAPTER XX. 

OATH AGAINST SIMONY. 

From an imaginary resemblance between the purchase of a benefice, 
and Simon Magus's attempt to purchase the gift of the Holy Ghost, 
(Acts viii. 19,) the obtaining of ecclesiastical preferment by pecuniary 
considerations has been termed Simony. 



OATH AGAINST SIMONY. 89 

The sale of advowsons is inseparable from the allowance of private 
patronage : as patronage would otherwise devolve to the most indigent, 
and for that reason the most improper hands it could be placed in. Nor 
did the law ever intend to prohibit the passing of advowsons from one 
patron to another • but to restrain the patron, who possesses the right 
of presenting at the vacancy, from being influenced, in the choice of his 
presentee, by a bribe or benefit to himself. It is the same distinction 
with that which obtains in a freeholder's vote for his representative in 
parliament. The right of voting, that is, the freehold to which the right 
pertains, may be bought and sold as freely as any other property ] but 
the exercise of that right, the vote itself, may not be purchased, or in- 
fluenced by money. 

For this purpose the law imposes upon the presentee, who is gene- 
rally concerned in the simony, if there be any, the following oath : •' I 
do swear that I have made no simomacal payment, contract, or promise, 
directly or indirectly, by myself, or by any other to my knowledge, or 
with my consent, to any person or persons whatsoever, for or concern- 
ing the procuring and obtaining of this ecclesiastical place, &c. ; nor 
will, at any time hereafter, perform or satisfy any such kind of payment, 
contract, or promise, made by any other without my knowledge or con- 
sent : So help me God, through Jesus Christ !" 

It is extraordinary that Bishop Gibson should have thought this oath 
to be against all promises whatsoever, when the terms of the oath ex- 
pressly restrain it to simoniacal promises; and the law alone must pro- 
nounce what promises, as well as what payments and contracts, are 
simoaiacal, and consequently come within the oath ; and what do not so. 

ISuw the law adjudges to be simony, — 

1 . AU payments, contracts, or promises made by any person for a 
benefice already vacant. The advo wson of a void turn, by law, cannot 
be transferred from one patron to another ; therefore, if the void turn be 
procured by money, it must be by a pecuniary influence upon the then 
subsisting patron in the choice of his presentee, which is the very prac- 
tice the law condemns. 

2. A clergyman's purchasing of the next turn of a benefice/or him- 
self, " directly or indirectly,-' that is, by himself, or by another person 
with his money. It does not appear that the law prohibits a clergyman 
from purchasing the perpetuity of a patronage, more than any other 
person : but purchasing the perpetuity, and forthwith selling it again 
with a reservation of the next turn, and with no other design than to 
possess himself of the next turn, is in frav.dem legis, and inconsistent 
with the oath. 

3. The procuring of a piece of preferment, by ceding to the patron 
any rights, or probable rights, belonging to it. This is simony of the 
worst kind 3 for it is not only buying preferment, but robbing the sue 
cession to pay for it, 

4. Promises to the patron of a portion of the profit, of a remission of 
tithes or dues, or other advantage out of the produce of the benefice 3 
which kind of compact is a pernicious condescension in the clergy, ia- 
dependent of the oath : for it tends to introduce a practice, which may 



90 LOCAL STATUTES. 

very soon become general, of giving the revenue of churches to the lay 
patrons, and supplying the duty by indigent stipendiaries. 

5. General bonds of resignation, that is, bonds to resign upon demand. 

I doubt not but that the oath against simony is binding upon the con- 
sciences of those who take it, though I question much the expediency 
of requiring it. It is very fit to debar public patrons, such as the king, 
the lord chancellor, bishops, ecclesiastical corporations, and the like, 
from this kind of traffic ; because from them may be expected some re- 
gard to the qualifications of the persons whom they promote. But the 
oath lays a snare for the integrity of the clergy ; and I do not perceive, 
that the requiring of it in cases of private patronage produces any good 
effect sufficient to compensate for this danger. 

Where advowsons are holden along with manors, or other principal 
estates, it would be an easy regulation to forbid that they should ever 
hereafter be separated ] and would, at least, keep church preferment out 
of the hands of brokers. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

OATHS TO OBSERVE LOCAL STATUTES. 

Members of colleges in the Universities, and of other ancient foun- 
dations, are required to swear to the observance of their respective 
statutes; which observance is become in some cases unlawful, in others 
impracticable, in others useless, in others inconvenient. 

Unlawful directions are countermanded by the authority which made 
them unlawful. 

Impracticable directions are dispensed with by the necessity of the 
case. 

The only question is how far the members of these societies may take 
upon themselves to judge of the iyiconvenieiicy of any particular direc- 
tion, and make that a reason for laying aside the observation of it. 

The animus imponentis^ which is the measure of the juror's duty, 
seems to be satisfied when nothing is omitted, but what, from some 
change in the circumstances under which it was prescribed, it may fairly 
be presumed that the founder himself would have dispensed with. 

To bring a case within this rule, the inconveniency must — - 

1 . Be manifest ; concerning which there is no doubt. 

2. It must arise from some change in the circumstances of the insti- 
tution ] for, let the inconveniency be what it will, if it existed at the 
time of the foundation, it must be presumed that the founder did not 
deem the avoiding of it of sufficient importance to alter his plan. 

3. The direction of the statute must not only be inconvenient in the 
general (for so may the institution itself be,) but prejudicial to the par- 
ticular end proposed by the institution ; for it is this last circumstance 
which proves that the founder would have dispensed with it in pursu- 
ance of his own purpose. 



SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF RELIGION. 91 

The statutes of some colleges forbid the speaking of any language 
but Latin within the walls of the college • direct that a certain number, 
and not fewer than that number, be allowed the use of an apartment 
among them ; that so many hours of each day be employed in public 
exercises, lectures, or disputations ; and some other articles of disciphne 
adapted to the tender years of the students who in former times resorted 
to universities. 

Were colleges to retain such rules, nobody nowadays would come 
near them. They are laid aside, therefore, though parts of the statutes, 
and as such included within the oath, not merely because they are 
inconvenient, but because there is sufficient reason to believe that the 
founders themselves would have dispensed with them, as subversive of 
their own designs. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF RELIGION. 

Subscription to articles of religion, though not more than a declara- 
tion of the subscriber's assent, may properly enough be considered in 
connection with the subject of oaths, because it is governed by the same 
rule of interpretation : 

Which rule is the animus imponentis. 

The inquiry, therefore, concerning subscription, will be, quis imposmt, 
et quo animo 7 

The bishop who receives the subscription is not the imposer, any 
more than a crier of a court, who administers the oath to the jury and 
witnesses, is the person that imposes it ] nor, consequently, is the pri- 
vate opinion or interpretation of the bishop of any signification to the 
subscriber, one way or other. The compilers of the Thirty-nine Arti- 
cles are not to be considered as the imposers of subscription, any more 
than the framer or drawer up of the law is the person that enacts it. 

The legislature of the 13th Eliz. is the imposer, whose intention the 
subscriber is bound to satisfy. 

They who contend that nothing less can justify subscription to the 
Thirty-nine Articles than the actual belief of each and every separate 
proposition contained in them, must suppose that the legislature expect- 
ed the consent of ten thousand men, and that in perpetual succession, 
not to one controverted proposition, but to many hundreds. It is diffi- 
cult to conceive how this could be expected by any who observed the 
incurable diversity of haman opinion upon all subjects short of demon- 
stration. 

If the authors of the law did not intend this, what did they intend '^ 

They intended to exclude from offices in the church, 

1 . All abettors of popery : 

2. Anabaptists : who were at that time a powerful party on the 
continent : 



92 WILLS. 

3. The Puritans; who were hostile to an episcopal constitution: 
and, in general, the members of such leading sects or toreign establish- 
ments as threatened to overthrow our own. 

Whoever finds himself comprehended within these descriptions ought 
not to subscribe. Nor can a subscriber to the articles take advantage 
of any latitude which our rule may seem to allow, who is not first con- 
vinced that he is truly and substantially satisfying the intention of the 
legislature. 

During the present state of ecclesiastical patronage, in which private 
individuals are permitted to impose teachers upon parishes with which 
they are often little or not at all connected, some limitation of the pa- 
tron's choice may be necessary to prevent unedifying contentions be- 
tween neighboring teachers, or between the teachers and their respec- 
tive congregations. But this danger, if it exist, may be provided against 
with equal effect, by converting the articles of faith into articles of 
peace. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

WILLS. 

The fundamental question upon this subject is, whether Wills are 
of natural or of adventitious right ? that is, whether the right of direct- 
ing the disposition of property after his death belongs to a man in a state 
of nature, and by the law of natur^^, or v/hether it be given him entire- 
ly by the positive regulations of the country he lives in ? 

The immediate produce of each man's personal labor, as the tools, 
weapons, and utensils which he manufactures, the tent or hut that he 
builds, and perhaps the flocks and herds which he breeds and rears, 
are as much his own as the labor was which he employed upon them, 
that is, are his property naturally and absolutely; and consequently he 
may give or leave them to whom he pleases, there being nothing to 
limit the continuance of his right, or to restrain the alienation of it. 

But every other species of property, especially property in land, stands 
upon a different foundation. 

We have seen, in the Chapter upon Property, that, in a state of na- 
ture, a man's right to a particular spot of ground arises from his using 
it, and his wanting it ] consequently ceases with the use and want : so 
that at his death the estate reverts to the community, without any re- 
gard to the owner's last will, or even any preference of his family, far- 
ther than as they become the first occupiers, after him, and succeed to 
the same want and use. 

Moreover, as natural rights cannot, like rights created by act of par- 
hament, expire at the end of a certain num^ber of years ] if the testator 
have a right, by the law of nature, to dispose of his property, one mo- 
ment after his death, he has the same right to direct the disposition of 
it for a million of £Lges after him ] v/hich is absurd. 



WILLS. 93 

The ancient apprehensions of mankind upon the subject were con- 
formable to this account of it, for wills have been introduced into most 
countries by a positive act of the state : as by the laws of Solon into 
Greece ; by the Twelve Tables into Rome ; and that not till after a 
considerable progress had been made in legislation, and in the economy of 
civil life. Tacitus relates, that among the Germans they were disal- 
lowed ; and what is more remarkable, in this country, since the Con- 
quest, lands could not be devised by will, till within little more than two 
hundred years ago, when this privilege was restored to the subject, by 
an act of Parliament, in the latter end of the reign of Henry the Eighth. 

No doubt, many beneficial purposes are attained by extending the 
owners power over his property beyond his life, and beyond his natu- 
ral right. It invites to industry ] it encourages marriage ] it secures the 
dutifulness and dependency of children : but a limit must be assigned 
to the duration of this power. The utmost extent to which, in any 
case, entails are allowed by the laws of England to operate, is during 
the lives in existence at the death of the testator, and one-and-twenty 
years beyond these ] after which, there are ways and means of setting 
them aside. 

From the consideration that wills are the creatures of the municipal 
law which gives them their efficacy, may be deduced a determination of 
the question, whether the intention of the testator in an informal will 
be binding upon the conscience of those who, by operation of law, suc- 
ceed to his estate. By an informal will, I mean a will void in law, for 
want of some requisite formality, though no doubt be entertained of its 
meaning and authenticity : as, suppose a man make his will, devising 
his freehold estate to his sister's son, and the will be attested by two 
only, instead of three subscribing witnesses ; would the brother's son, 
wlio is heir at law to the testator, be bound in conscience to resign his 
ciaim to the estate, out of deference to his uncle's intention '? or, on the 
contrary, would not the devisee under the will be bound upon disco- 
v^ery of this flaw in it, to surrender the estate, suppose he had gained 
possession of it, to the heir-at-law 1 

Generally speaking, the heir-at-law is not bound by the intention of 
the testator ] for the intention can signify nothing, unless the person in- 
tending have a right to govern the descent of the estate. That is the 
first question. Now this right the testator can only derive from the 
law of the land : but the law confers the right upon certain conditions, 
with which conditions he has not complied ] therefore the testator can 
lay no claim to the power which he pretends to exercise, as he hath not 
entitled himself to the benefit of that law, by virtue of which alone the 
estate ought to attend his disposal. Consequently, the devisee under 
the will, who, by concealing this flaw in it, keeps possession of the 
estate, is in the situation of any other person who avails himself of his 
neighbor's ignorance to detain from him his property. The will is so 
much waste paper, from the defect of right in the person who made it. 
Nor is this catching at an expression of law to pervert the substantial 
design of it : for I apprehend it to be the deliberate mind of the legisla- 
ture, that no wir should take effect upon real estates, unless authenti- 



^4 WILLS. 

cated in the precise manner which the statute describes. Had testamen- 
tary dispositions been founded in any natural right, independent of po 
sitive constitutions, I should have thought differently of this question : 
for then I should have considered the law rather as refusing its assist 
ance to enforce the right of the devisee, than as extinguishing or work- 
ing any alteration in the right itself. 

And after all, I should choose to propose a case where no considera- 
tion of pity to distress, of duty to a parent, or of gratitude to a benefac- 
tor, interfered with the general rule of justice. 

The regard due to kindred in the disposal of our fortune (except the 
case of lineal kindred, which is diiferent.) arises either from the respect 
we owe to the presumed intention of the ancestor from whom we re- 
ceived our fortunes, or from the expectations which we have encouraged. 
The intention of the ancestor is presumed with greater certainty, as well 
as entitled to more respect, the fewer degrees he is removed from us ; 
which makes the difference in the different degrees of kindred. For in- 
stance, it may be presumed to be a father's intention and desire, that the 
inheritance which he leaves, after it has served the turn and generation 
of one son, should remain a provision for the families of his other chil- 
dren, equally related and dear to him as the oldest. Whoever, there- 
fore, without cause, gives away his patrimony from his brother's or 
sister's family, is guilty not so much of an injury to them as of ingrati- 
tude to his parent. The deference due from the possessor of a fortune 
to the presumed desire of his ancestor will also vary with this circum- 
stance ) whether the ancestor earned the fortune by his personal indus- 
try, acquired it by accidental successes, or only transmitted the inheri- 
tance which he received. 

Where a man's fortune is acquired by himself, and he has done no- 
thing to excite expectation, but rather has refrained from those particu- 
lar attentions which tend to cherish expectation, he is perfectly disen- 
gaged from the force of the above reasons, and at liberty to leave his 
fortune to his friends, to charitable or public purposes, or to whom he 
will : the same blood, proximity of blood, and the like, are merely 
modes of speech, implying nothing real, nor any obligation of them- 
selves. 

There is always, however, a reason for providing for our poor rela- 
tions in preference to others who may be equally necessitous, which is, 
that if we do not, no one else will ; mankind, by an established con- 
sent, leaving the reduced branches of good families to the bounty of 
their wealthy alliances. 

The not making a will is a very culpable omission, where it is attend- • 
ed with the following effects : where it leaves daughters, or younger 
children, at the mercy of the eldest son; where it distributes a 
personal fortune equally among the children, although there be no 
equality in their exigencies or situation ; where it leaves an opening for 
htigation \ or lastly and principally, where it defrauds creditors ) for by 
a defect in our laws, which has been long and strangely overlooked, 
real estates are not subject to the payment of debts by simple contract, 
unless made so by will, although credit is, in fact, generally given to 



WILLS. 95 

the possession of such estates : he therefore, who neglects to make the 
necessary appointments for the payment of his dehts, as far as his ef 
fects extend, sins, as it has been justly said, in his grave ; and if he 
omits this on purpose to defeat the demands of his creditors, he dies 
with a deliberate fraud in his heart. 

Anciently, when any one died without a will, the bishop of the dio- 
cese took possession of his personal fortune, in order to dispose of it for 
the benefit of his soul, that is, to pious or charitable uses. It became 
necessary, therefore, that the bishop should be satisfied of the authenti- 
city of the will, when there was any, before he resigned the right which 
he had to take possession of the dead man's fortune in case of intesta- 
cy. In this way, wills, and controversies relating to wills, came with- 
in the cognizance of the ecclesiastical courts : under the jurisdiction of 
which, wills of personals (the only wills that were made formerly) still 
continue, though in truth no more nowadays connected with religion, 
than any other instruments of conveyance. This is a peculiarity in the 
English law. 

Succession to intestates must be regulated by- positive rules of law, 
there being no principle of natural justice whereby to ascertain the pro- 
portion of the different claimants ; not to mention that the claim itself, 
especially of collateral kindred, seems to have little foundation in the 
law of nature. 

These regulations should be guided by the duty and presumed incli 
nation of the deceased, so far as these considerations can be consulted 
by general rules. The statutes of Charles the Second, commonly called 
the Statutes of Distribution, which adopt the rule of the Roman laws in 
the distribution of personals, are sufficiently equitable. They assign 
one-third to the widow, and two-thirds to the children ; in case of no 
children, one-half to the widow, and the other half to the next of kin ; 
where neither widow nor lineal descendants survive, the whole to the 
next of kin, and to be equally divided among kindred of equal degree, 
without distinction of whole blood and half blood, or of consanguinity 
by the father's or mother's side. The descent of real estates, that is, of 
houses and land, having been settled in more remote and in ruder times, 
is less reasonable. There never can be much to complain of in a rule 
which every person may avoid, by so easy a provision as that of , 
making his will ; otherwise our law in this respect is chargeable with 
some flagrant absurdities ; such as, that an estate shall in nowise go to 
the brother or sister ol the half blood, though it came to the deceased 
from the common parent ; that it shall go to the remotest relation the 
intestate has in the world, rather than to his own father or mother ; or 
even be forfeited for want of an heir, though both parents survive } that 
the most distant paternal relation shall be preferred to an uncle, or own 
cousin, by the mother's side, notwithstanding the estate was purchased 
and acquired by the intestate himself. 

Land not being so divisible as money, may be a reason for making a 
difference in the course of inheritance ^ but there ought to be no differ- 
ence but what is founded upon that reason. The Roman law m*de 
none. 



BOOK IIL 

PART II. 

OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH ARE INDETERMINATE. 

CHAPTER i: 

CHARITY. 

1 USE the term Charity neither in the common sense of bounty to the 
poor, nor in St. Paul's sense of Benevolence to all mankind ; but I 
apply it, at present, in a sense more commodious to my purpose, to 
signify the promoting of the happiness of our inferiors. 

Charity, in this sense, I take to be the principal province of virtue 
and religion ; for, while worldly prudence will direct our behavior 
towards our superiors, and politeness toward our equals, there is little 
besides the consideration of duty, or an habitual humanity which comes 
into the place of consideration, to produce a proper conduct toward those 
who are beneath us, and dependent upon us. 

There are three principal methods of promoting the happiness of our 
mferiors : 

1 . By the treatment of our domestics and dependents. 

2. By professional assistance. 

3. By pecuniary bounty. 

CHAPTER II. 

CHARITY. 
THE TREATMENT OF OUR DOMESTICS AND DEPENDENTS. 

A PARTY of friends setting out together upon a journey soon find it 
to be the best for all sides, that, while they are upon the road, one of 
the company should wait upon the rest : another ride forward to seek 
out lodging and entertainment ; a third carry the portmanteau ; a fourth 
lake charge of the horses ; a fifth bear the purse, conduct and direct the 



SLAVERY. 97 

route ; not forgetting, however, that as they were equal and independent 
when they set out, so they are all to return to a level again at their 
journey^s end. The same regard and respect ; the same forbearance, 
lenity, and reserve in using their service ; the same mildness in deliv- 
ering commands ; the same study to make their journey comfortable 
and pleasant, which he whose lot it was to direct the rest, would in 
common decency think himself bound to observe toward them ; ought 
we to show to those who, in the casting of the parts of human society, 
happen to be placed within our power, or to depend upon us. 

Another reflection of a like tendency with the former is, that our ob- 
ligation to them is much greater than theirs to us. It is a mistake to 
suppose that the rich man maintains his servants, tradesmen, tenants, 
and laborers : the truth is, they maintain him. It is their industry 
which supplies his table, furnishes his wardrobe, builds his houses, 
adorns his equipage, provides his amusements. It is not the estate, but 
the labor employed upon it, that pays his rent. All that he does is to 
distribute what others produce 5 which is the least part of the business. 
Nor do I perceive any foundation for an opinion, which is often 
handed round in genteel company, that good usage is thrown away 
upon low and ordinary minds ; that they are insensible of kindness, 
and incapable of gratitude. If by "low and ordinary minds" are 
meant the minds of men in low and ordinary stations, they seem to be 
affected by benefits in the same way that all others are, and to be no 
'ess ready to requite them : and it would be a very unaccountable law 

)f nature if it were otherwise. 

Whatever uneasiness we occasion to our domestics, which neither 
promotes our service nor answers the just ends of punishment, is mani- 

estly wrong ; were it only upon the general principle of diminishing 

he sum of human happiness. 
By which rule we are forbidden — 

1. To enjoin unnecessary labor or confinement from the mere love 
\nd wantonness of domination : 

2. To insult our servants by harsh, scornful, or opprobrious lan- 
guage : 

3. To refuse them any harmless pleasures : 

And, by the same principle, are also forbidden causeless or immode- 
rate anger, habitual peevishness, and groundless suspicion. 



CHAPTER III. 

SLAVERY. 

The prohibitions of the last chapter extend to the treatment of slaves, 
being founded upon a principle independent of the contract between 
masters and servants. 

I define slavery to be " an obligation to labor for the benefit of the 
master, without the contract or consent of the servant." 

E 



98 SLAVERY. 

This obligation may arise, consistently with the law of nature, from 
three causes : 

1. From crimes, 

2. From captivity. 

3. From debt. 

In the first case, the continuance of the slavery, as of any other pun- 
ishment, ought to be proportioned to the crime ; in the second and third 
cases, it ought to cease, as soon as the demand of the injured nation, or 
private creditor, is satisfied. 

^The slave trade upon the coast of Africa is not excused by these 
principles. When slaves in that country are brought to market, no 
questions, I believe, are asked about the origin or justice of the vender's 
title. It may be presumed, therefore, that this title is not always, if it 
be ever, founded in any of the causes above assigned. ^ 

But defect of right in the first purchase is the least crime with which 
this traffic is chargeable. The natives are excited to war and mutual de- 
predation, for the sake of supplying their contracts, or furnishing their 
market with slaves. With this the wickedness begins. The slaves, 
torn away from parents, wives, children, from their friends and com- 
panions, their fields and flocks, their home and country, are transported 
to the European settlements in America, with no other accommodation 
on shipboard than what is provided for brutes. This is the second 
stage of cruelty * from which the miserable exiles are delivered, only 
to be placed, and that for life, in subjection to a dominion and system 
of laws the most merciless and tyrannical that ever were tolerated upon 
the face of the earth ] and from all that can be learned from the ac- 
counts of the people upon the spot, the inordinate authority which the 
plantation laws confer upon the slave-holder is exercised, by the En- 
glish slave-holder especially, with rigor and brutality. / , 

But necessity is pretended ; the name under which every enormity is 
attempted to be justified. And, after all, what is the necessity ? It 
has never been proved that the land could not be cultivated there, as it 
is here, by hired servants. It is said that it could not be cultivated 
with quite the same conveniency and cheapness, as by the labor of 
slaves ; by which means a pound of sugar, which the planter now sells 
for sixpence, could not be afforded under sixpence halfpenny ; — and 
this is the iwcessity ! 

The great revolution which has taken place in the Western world 
may probably conduce (and who knows but that it was designed ?) to 
accelerate the fall of this abominable tyranny ; and now that this con 
test, and the passions which attend it are no more, there may succeed 
perhaps a season for reflecting, whether a legislature which had so long 
lent its assistance to the support of an institution replete with human 
misery, was fit to be trusted with an empire the most extensive that 
ever obtained in any age or quarter of the world. 

Slavery was a part of the civil constitution of most countries when 
Christianity appeared ; yet no passage is to be found in the Christian 
Scriptures by which it is condemned or prohibited. This is true ; for 
Christianity, soliciting admission into all nations of the world, abstain- 



PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE. ^ 99 

ed, as it behooved it, from intermeddling with the civil institutions of 
any. But does it follow, from the silence of Scripture concerning them, 
that all the civil institutions which then prevailed were right ? or that 
the bad should not be exchanged for better '? 

Besides this, the discharging of slaves from all obligation to obey 
their masters, which is the consequence of pronouncing slavery to be 
unlawful, would have had no better eiFect than to let loose one. half 
of mankind upon the other. Slaves would have been tempted to em- 
brace a religion which asserted their right to freedom ; masters would 
hardly have been persuaded to consent to claims founded upon such 
authority ; the most calamitous of all contests, a bellum servile, might 
probably have ensued, to the reproach, if not the extinction, of the 
Christian name. 

The truth is, the emancipation of slaves should be gradual, and be car- 
ried on by provisions of law, and under the protection of civil govern- 
ment. Christianity can only operate as an alternative. By the mild 
diffusion of its light and influence, the minds of men are insensibly pre- 
pared to perceive and correct the enormities, which folly, or wicked- 
ness, or accident, hava introduced into their public establishments. In 
this way the Greek and Roman slavery, and since these the feudal ty- 
ranny, has declined before it. And we trust that, as the knowledge 
and authority of the same religion advance in the world, they will ban- 
ish what remains of this odious institution. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CHARITY. 
PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE. 

This kind of beneficence is chiefly to be expected from members of 
the legislature, magistrates, medical, legal, and sacerdotal professions. 

1. The care of the poor ought to be the principal object of all laws 3 
for this plain reason, that t?ie rich are able to take care of themselves. 

Much has been, and more might be done by the laws of this country, 
toward the relief of the impotent, and the protection and encouragement 
of the industrious poor. Whoever applies himself to collect observa- 
tions upon the state and operation of the poor laws, and to contrive re- 
medies for the imperfections and abuses which he observes, and digests 
these remedies into acts of parliament, and conducts them, by argument 
or influence, through the two branches of the legislature, or communi- 
cates his ideas to those who are more likely to carry them into effect, 
deserves well of a class of the community so numerous, that their hap- 
piness forms a principal part of the whole. The study and activity thus 
employed is charity, in the most meritorious sense of the word. 

2. The application of parochial relief is intrusted, in the first instance, 
to overseers and contractors, who have an interest in opposition to that 



100 PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE. 

of the poor, inasmuch as whatever they allow them comes in part out 
of their own pocket. For this reason, the law has deposited with jus- 
tices of the peace a power of superintendence and control : and the ju- 
dicious interposition of this power is a most useful exertion of charity, 
and ofttimes within the ability of those who have no other way of 
serving their generation. A country gentleman of very moderate edu- 
cation, and who has little to spare from his fortune, by learning so much 
of the poor law as is to be found in Dr. Burn's Justice, and by furnish- 
ing himself with a knowledge of the prices of labor and provision, so as 
to be able to estimate the exigencies of a family, and what is to be ex- 
pected from their industry, may, in this way, place out the one talent 
committed to him to great account. 

3. Of all private professions, that of medicine puts it in a man's power 
to do the most good at the least expense. Health, which is precious to 
all, is to the poor invaluable \ and their complaints, as agues, rheuma- 
tisms, &c., are often such as yield to medicine. And, with respect to 
the expense, drugs at first hand cost little, and advice costs nothing, 
where it is only bestowed upon those who could not afford to pay for 
it. 

4. The rights of the poor are not so important or intricate as their 
contentions are violent and ruinous. A lawyer or attorney, of tolera- 
ble knowledge in his profession, has commonly judgment enough toad- 
just these disputes, with all the effect, and without the expense of a 
lawsuit ; and he may be said to give a poor man twenty pounds Who 
prevents his throwing it away upon law. A /cga/man, whether of the 
profession or not, who, together with a spirit of conciliation, possesses 
the confidence of his neighborhood, will be much resorted to for this 
purpose, especially since the great increase of costs has produced a 
general dread of going to law. 

Nor is this line of beneficence confined to arbitration. Seasonable 
counsel, coming with the weight which the reputation of the adviser 
gives it, will often keep or extricate the rash and uninformed out ol 
great difiiculties. 

Lastly, I know not a more exalted charity than that which presents 
a shield against the rapacity or persecution of a tyrant. 

5. Between argument and authority (I mean that authority which 
flows from voluntary respect, and attends upon sanctity and disinterest- 
edness of character,) something may be done, among the lower orders 
of mankind, toward the regulation of their conduct, and the satisfaction 
of their thoughts. This office belongs to the ministers of religion ; or, 
rather, whoever undertakes it becomes a minister of religion. The infe- 
rior clergy, who are nearly upon a level with the common sort of their 
parishioners, and who on that account gain an easier admission to their 
society and confidence, have in this respect more in their power than 
their superiors : the discreet use of this power constitutes one of the 
most respectable functions of human nature. 



PECUNIARY BOUNTY. 101 

CHAPTER V. 

CHARITY. 
PECUNIARY BOUNTY. 

J . The obligation to bestow relief upon the poor. 

2. The manner of bestowing it. 

3. The pretence by which men excuse themselves from it. 



1 . The obligation to bestow relief upon the poor. 

They who rank pity among the original impulses of our nature, 
rightly contend, that when this principle prompts us to the relief of hu- 
man misery, it indicates the Divine intention, and our duty. Indeed, 
the same conclusion is deducible from the existence of the passion, 
whatever account he given of its origin. Whether it be an instinct or 
a habit, it is in fact a property of our nature, which God appointed ) 
and the final cause for which it was appointed, is to afford to the mise- 
rable, in the compassion of their fellow creatures, a remedy for those 
inequalities and distresses which God foresaw that many must be ex- 
posed to, under every general rule for the distribution of property. 

Besides this, the poor have a claim founded in the law of natui*e, 
which may be thus explained : — All things were originally common. 
No one being able to produce a charter from Heaven, had any better 
title to a particular possession than his next neighbor. There were 
reasons for mankind's. agreeing upon a separation of this common fund; 
and God for these reasons is presumed to have ratified it. But this se- 
paration was made and consented to, upon the expectation and condi- 
tion that every one should have left a sufficiency for his subsistence, or 
the means of procuring it ] and as no fixed laws for the regulation of 
property can be so contrived as to provide for the relief of every case 
and distress which may arise, these cases and distresses, when their 
right and share in the common stock were given up or taken from them, 
were supposed to be left to the voluntary bounty of those w^ho might 
be acquainted with the exigencies of their situation, and in the way of 
affording assistance. And, therefore, when the partition of property is 
rigidly maintained against the claims of indigence and distress, it is 
maintained in opposition to the intention of those who made it, and to 
His, who is the Supreme Proprietor of everything, and who has filled 
the Vv'orld with plenteousness, for the sustentation and comfort of all 
whom he sends into it. 

The Christian Scriptures are more copious and explicit upon this duty 
than upon almost any other. The description which Christ hath left us 
of the proceedings of the last day establishes the obligation of bounty 
beyond controversy : — '' When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, 
and all the holy angels with him, then sliall he sit upon the throne of 
his glory, and before him shall be gathered aU nations : And he shall 



102 PECUNIARY BOUNTY. 

separate them one from another. Then shall the King say to them on 
his right hand, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre- 
pared for you from the foundation of the world : For I was an hunger- 
ed, and ye gave me meat : I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink : I was 
a stranger, and ye took me in : naked, and ye clothed me : I was sick, 
and ye visited me : I was in prison, and ye came unto me. And inas- 
much as ye have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, ye 
have done it unto me."* It is not necessary to understand this passage 
as a literal account of what will actually pass on that day. Supposing 
it only a scenical description of the rules and principles by which the 
Supreme Arbiter of our destiny will regulate his decisions, it conveys 
the same lesson to us • it equally demonstrates of how great value and 
importance these duties in the sight of God are, and what stress will be 
laid upon them. The apostles also describe this virtue as propitiating 
the Divine favor in an eminent degree. And these recommendations 
have produced their effect. It does not appear that, before the times of 
Christianity, an infirmary, hospital, or public charity of any kind, ex- 
isted in the world : whereas most countries in Christendom have long 
abounded with these institutions. To which may be added, that a 
spirit of private liberality seems to flourish amid the decay of many 
other virtues ] not to mention the legal provision for the poor, which 
obtains in this country, and v/hich was unknown and unthought of by 
the most humanized nations of antiquity. 

St. Paul adds upon the subject an excellent direction, and which is 
practicable by all who have anything to give : — " Upon the first day of 
the week (or any other stated time,) let every one of you lay by in 
store, as God hath prospered him." By which I understand St. Paul to 
recommend what is the very thing wanting with most men, the being 
charitable upon a plan ; that is, upon a deliberate comparison of our 
fortunes with the reasonable expenses and expectations of our families, 
to compute what we can spare, and to lay by so much for charitable 
purposes in some mode or other. The mode will be a consideration 
afterward. 

The effect which Christianity produced upon some of its first converts 
was such as might be looked for from a divine religion, coming with 
full force and miraculous evidence upon the consciences of mankind. 
It overwhelmed all worldly considerations in the expectations of a more 
important existence : — " And the multitude of them that believed were 
of one heart and of one soul ] neither said any of them that aught of 
the things which he possessed was his own ] but they had all things in 
common. Neither was there any among them that lacked; for as 
many as were possessors of lands or houses, sold them, and brought the 
prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' 
feet ] and distribution was made unto every man according as he had 
need." Acts, iv. 32. 

Nevertheless, this community of goods, however it manifested the 



*MqU. XXV. 31. 



PECUNIARY BOUNTY. 103 

sincere zeal of the primitive Christians, is no precedent for our imitation. 
It was confined to the Church at Jerusalem; continued not long there : 
was never enjoined upon any, (Acts, v. 4;) and, although it might suit 
with the particular circumstances of a small and select society, is alto- 
gether impracticable in a large and mixed community. 

The conduct of the apostles upon the occasion deserves to be noticed. 
Their followers laid down their fortunes at their feet • but so far were 
they from taking advantage of this unlimited confidence, to enrich them- 
selves, or to estabhsh then- own authority, that they soon after got rid 
of this business, as inconsistent with the main object of their mission, 
and transferred the custody and management of the public fund to dea- 
cons elected to that office by the people at large. Acts, vi. 

2. Tlie manner of bestowing bounty; or the different kinds of 
charity. 

Every question between the different kinds of charity supposes the 
sum bestowed to be the same. 

There are three kinds of charity which prefer a claim to attention. 

The first, and in my judgment one of the best, is to give stated and 
considerable sums, by way of pension or annuity, to individuals or 
families, with whose behavior and distress we ourselves are acquainted. 

When I speak of considerable sums, I mean only that five pounds or 
any other sum, given at once, or divided among five or fewer families, 
will do more good than the same sum distributed among a greater num- 
ber, in shillings or half-crowns ] and that, because it is more likely to 
be properly applied by the persons who receive it. A poor fellow, who 
can find no better use for a shilling than to drink his benefactor's health, 
and purchase half an hour's recreation for himself, would hardly break 
into a guinea for any such purpose, or be so improvident as not to lay 
it by for an occasion of importance, e. g. for his rent, his clothing, fuel, 
or stock of winter's provision. It is a still greater recommendation of 
this kind of charity, that pensions and annuities, which are paid regu- 
larly, and can be expected at the time, are the only way by which we 
can prevent one part of a poor man's sufferings — the dread of want. 

2. But as this kind of charity supposes that proper objects of such 
expensive benefactions fall within our private knowledge and observa- 
tion, which does not happen to all, a second method of doing good, 
which is in every one's power who has the money to spare, is by sub- 
scription to public charities. Public charities admit of this argument in 
their favor, that your money goes farther towards attaining the end for 
which it is given, than it can do by any private and separate beneficence. 
A guinea, for example, contributed to an infirmary, becomes the means 
of providing one patient at least with a physician, surgeon, apothecary, 
with medicine, diet, lodging, and suitable attendance : which is not the 
tenth part of what the same assistance, if it could be procured at all, 
would cost to a sick person or family in any other situation. 

3. The last, and, compared with the former, the lowest exertion of 
benevolence is in the relief of beggars. Nevertheless, I by no means 
approve the indiscriminate rejection of all who implore our alms in this 
Way. Some may perish by such a conduct. Men are sometimes over- 



104 PECUNIARY BOUNTY. 

taken by distress, for which all other relief would come too late. Be- 
sides which, resolutions of this kind compel us to offer such violence to 
our humanity, as may go near, in a little while, to suffocate the principle 
itself ; which is a very serious consideration. A good man, if he do 
not surrender himself to his feelings without reserve, will at least lend 
an ear to importunities which come accompanied with outward attesta- 
tions of distress ; and after a patient audience of the complaint, will 
direct himself, not so much by any previous resolution which he may 
have formed upon the subject, as by the circumstances and credulity of 
the account that he receives. 

There are other species of charity well contrived to make the money 
expended go far ; such as keeping down the price of fuel or provision, 
in case of monopoly or temporary scarcity, by purchasing the articles 
at the best market, and retailing them at prime cost, or at a small loss ; 
or the adding of a bounty to particular species of labor, when the price 
is accidentally depressed. 

The proprietors of large estates have it in their power to facilitate 
the maintenance, and thereby to encourage the establishment of families 
(which is one of the noblest purposes to which the rich and great can 
con\^ert their endeavors,) by building cottages, splitting farms, erecting 
manufactories, cultivating wastes, embanking the sea, draining marshes, 
and other expedients, which the situation of each estate points out. If 
the profits of these undertakings do not repay the expense, let the au- 
thors of them place the difference to the account of charity. It is true 
of almost all such projects, that tlie public is a gainer by them, what- 
ever the owiiji be. 'And where the loss can be spared, this considera- 
tion is sufficient. 

It is become a question of some importance under what circumstan- 
ces works of charity ought to be done in private, and when they may 
be made public without detracting from the merit of the action, if indeed 
they ever may ] the Author of our religion having delivered a rule upon 
this subject which seems to enjoin universal secrecy : — When thou 
doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth; that 
thy alms may be in secret, and thy Father, which seeth in secret, him- 
self shall rev/ard thee openly." (Matt. vi. 3, 4.) From the preamble 
to this prohibition, I think it, however, plain that our Saviour's sole de- 
sign was to forbid ostentation, and all publishing of good works which 
proceeds from that motive : — "Take heed that ye do not your alms be- 
fore men, to be seen of them ; otherwise ye have no reward of your 
Father which is in heaven : therefore, when thou doest thine alms, do 
not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do, in the synagogues 
and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto 
you, they have their reward.'"' — Ver. 1, 2. There are motives for the 
doing our alms in public, besides those of ostentation^ with which there- 
fore our Saviour's rule has no concern ] such as, to testify our appro- 
bation of some particular species of charity and to recommend it to 
others ; to take off the prejudice which the want, or which is the same 
thing, the suppression of our name in the list of contributors might ex- 
cite against the charity, or against ourselves. And, so long as thesf 



PECUNIARY BOUNTY. 106 

motives are free from any mixture of vanity, they are in no danger of 
invading our Saviours prohibition ] they rather seem to comply with 
another direction which he has left us : " Let your light so shine before 
men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father 
which is in heaven." If it be necessary to propose a precise distinction 
upon the subject, 1 can think of none better than the following : When 
our bounty is beyond our fortune and station, that is, when it is more 
than could be expected from us, our charity should be private, if priva- 
cy be practicable ] when it is not more than might be expected, it may 
be public ; for we cannot hope to influence others to the imitation of 
extraordinary generosity, and therefore want, in the former case, the 
only justifiable reason for making it public. 

Having thus described several different exertions of charity, it may 
not be improper to take notice of a species of liberality, which is not 
charity in any sense of the wond : I mean the giving of entertainments 
or liquor, for the sake of popularity ] or the rewarding, treating, and 
maintaining the companions of our diversions, as hunters, shooters, 
fishers, and the like ; I do not say that this is crimmal ] I only say that 
it is not charity ; and that we are not to suppose because we give^ and 
give to the poor^ that it will stand in the place, or supersede the obliga- 
tion of more meritorious and disinterested bounty. 

3. The pretences by vjhich men excuse themselves from giving to tlie 
poor. 

1. "That they have nothing to spare," i. e. nothing for which they 
have not provided some other use ; nothing which their plan of expense, 
together with the savings they have resolved, to lay by, will not ex- 
haust : never reflecting whether it be in their power, or that it is their 
duty to retrench their expenses and contract their plan, " that they 
may have to give to them that need :" or rather, that this ought to have 
been part of their plan originally. 

2. " That they have families of their own, and that charity begins 
at home." The extent of this plea will be considered when we come 
to explain the duty of parents. 

3. "That charity does not consist in giving money, but in benevo- 
lence, philanthropy, love to all mankind, goodness of heart," &c. Hear 
St. James : " If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, 
and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace ; be ye warmed and 
filled ; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful 
for the body ; what doth it profit V' (James, ii. 15, 16.) 

4. " That giving to the poor is not mentioned in St. Paulas descrip- 
tion of charity, in the thirteenth chapter of his First Epistle to the Co- 
rinthians." This is not a description of charity, but of good nature ; 
and it is not necessary that every duty be mentioned in every place. 

5. " That they pay the poor rates." They might as well allege that 
they pay their debts : for the poor have the same right to that portion 
of a man's property which the laws assign to them, that the man him- 
self has to the remainder. 

6. " That they employ many poor persons !" — for their own sake, 
not the poor's :' — otherwise it is a good plea. 

E 2 



106 RESENTMENT. 

7. " That the poor do not suffer so much as we imagine : that edu- 
cation and habit have reconciled them to the evils of their condition, 
and make them easy under it." Habit can never reconcile human na- 
ture to the extremities of cold, hunger, and thirst, any more than it can 
reconcile the hand to the touch of a red hot iron : besides, the question 
is not, how unhappy any one is, but how much more happy we can 
make him. 

8. "That these people, give them what you will, will never thank 
you or think of you for it." In the first place, that is not true : in the 
second place, it was not for the sake of their thanks that you relieved 
them. 

9. '• That we are liable to be imposed upon." If a due inquiry be 
made, our merit is the same : besides that the distress is generally real, 
although the cause be untruly stated. 

10. " That they should apply to their parishes." This is not always 
practicable : to which we may add, that there are many requisites to a 
comfortable subsistence, which parish relief does not supply ] and that 
there are some who would suffer almost as much from receiving parish 
relief as by the want of it; and, lastly, that there are many modes of 
charity to which this answer does not relate at all. 

11. " That giving money encourages idleness and vagrancy." This 
is true only of injudicious and indiscriminate generosity. 

12. " That we have too many objects of charity at home to bestow 
any thing upon strangers ; or, that there are other charities, which are 
more useful, or stand in greater need." The value of this excuse de- 
pends entirely upon the fact^ whether we actually relieve those neigh- 
boring objects, and contribute to those other charities. 

Besides all these excuses, pride or prudery, or delicacy, or love of ease, 
keep one half of the world out of the way of observing what the other 
half suffer. 



CHAPTER VI. 



RESENTMENT. 

Resentment may be distinguished into anger and revenge. 

By anger, I mean the pain we suffer upon the receipt of an injury or 
affront, with the usual effects of that pain upon ourselves. 

By revenge^ the inflicting of pain upon the person who has injured 
or offended us, farther than the just ends of punishment or reparation 
require. 

Anger prompts to revenge ] but it is possible to suspend the effect, 
when we cannot altogether quell the principle. We are bound also to 
endeavor to qualify and correct the principle itself. So that our duty 
requires two different applications of the mind; and, for that reason, 
anger and revenge may be considered separately. 



ANGER. 107 

CHAPTER VII. 



" Be ye angry, and sin not ;" therefore all anger is not sinful : I sup 
pose, because some degree of it, ai,d upon some occasions, is inevitable 

It becomes sinful, or contradicts, however, the rule of Scripture, when 
it is conceived upon slight and inadequate provocations, and when it 
continues long. 

1 . When it is conceived upon slight provocations : for, " charity suf- 
fereth long, is not easily provoked." — " Let every man be slow to 
anger." Peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness are enumerated 
among the fruits of the spirit. Gal. v. 22, and compose the true Christian 
temper, as to this article of duty. 

2. When it continues long : for, " let not the sun go down upon your 
wrath." 

These precepts, and all reasoning indeed on the subject, suppose the 
passion of anger to be within our power : and this power consists not 
so much in any faculty we possess of appeasing our wrath at the time 
(for we are passive under the smart which an injury or affront occa- 
sions, and all we can then do is to prevent its breaking out into action.) 
as in so mollifying our minds by habits of just reflection, as to be less 
irritated by impressions of injury, and to be sooner pacified. 

Reflections proper for this purpose, and which may be called the 
sedatives of anger, are the following : The possibility of mistaking the 
motives from which the conduct that offends us proceeded : how often 
our offences have been the effect of inadvertency, when they were con- 
strued into indications of malice } the inducements which prompted our 
adversary to act as he did, and how powerfully the same inducement 
has, at one time or other, operated upon ourselves } that he is suffering 
perhaps under a contrition, which he is ashamed, or wants an opportu- 
nity, to confess • and how ungenerous it is to triumph by coldness or 
insult over a spirit already humbled in secret ] that the returns of kind- 
ness are sweet, and that there is neither honor nor virtue, nor use in re- 
sisting them -—for some persons think themselves bound to cherish and 
keep alive their indignation, when they find it dying away of itself. 
We may remember that others have their passions, their prejudices, their 
favorite aims, their fears, their cautions, their interests, their sudden im- 
pulses, their varieties of apprehension, as well as we : we may recollect 
what hath sometimes passed in our minds, when we have gotten on the 
wrong side of a quarrel, and imagine the same to be passing in our ad- 
versary's mind now ; when we became sensible of our misbehavior, 
what palliations we perceived in it, and expected others to perceive ; 
how we were affected by the kindness, and felt the superiority of a 
generous reception and ready forgiveness ; how persecution revived our 
spirits with our enmity, and seemed to justify the conduct in ourselves 
which we before blamed. Add to this, the indecency of extravagant 
anger ; how it renders us, while it lasts, the scorn and sport of all about 



I OH REVENGE. 

US, of which it leaves us, when it ceases, sensible and ashamed ; the 
inconveniences and irretrievable misconduct into which our irascibility 
has sometimes betrayed us ; the friendships it has lost us ; the distresses 
and embarrassments in which we have been involved by it ; and the 
sore repentance which, on one account or other, it always costs us. 

But the reflection calculated above all others to allay the haughtiness 
of temper which is ever finding out provocations, and which renders 
anger so impetuous, is that which the Gospel proposes • namely, that 
we ourselves are. or shortly shall be, suppliants for mercy and pardon 
at the judgment-seat of God. Imagine our secret sins disclosed and 
brought to light ] imagine us thus humbled and exposed : trembling 
under the hand of God ] casting ourselves on his compassion ; crying 
out for mercy : — imagine such a creature to talk of satisfaction and re- 
venge ; refusing to be entreated, disdaining to forgive ; extreme to mark 
and to resent what is done amiss : — imagine, I say, this, and you can 
hardly frame to yourself an instance of more impious and unnatural 
arrogance. 

The point is, to habituate ourselves to these reflections, till they rise 
up of their own accord when they are wanted, that is, instantly upon 
the receipt of an injury or affront, and with such force and coloring, as 
both to mitigate the paroxysms of our anger at the time, and at length 
to produce an alteration in the temper and disposition itself. 



CHAPTER Vlir. 

REVENGE. 

All pain occasioned to another in consequence of an offence or in- 
jury received from him, farther than what is calculated to procure repa- 
ration or promote the just ends of punishment, is so much revenge. 

There can be no difficulty in knowing when we occasion pain to an- 
other ; nor much in distinguishing, whether we do so with a view only 
to the ends of punishment, or from revenge : for, in the one case we 
proceed with reluctance, in the other with pleasure. 

It is highly probable from the light of nature, that a passion, which 
seeks its gratification immediately and expressly in giving pain, is dis- 
agreeable to the benevolent will and counsels of the Creator. Other 
passions and pleasures may, and often do, produce pain to some one ; 
but then pain is not, as it is here, the object of the passion, and the di- 
rect cause of the pleasure. This probability is converted into certainty, 
if we give credit to the authority which dictated the several passages of 
the Christian Scriptures that condemn revenge, or, what is the same 
thing, which enjoin forgiveness. 

We will set down the principal of these passages : and endeavor to 
collect from them, what conduct upon the whole is allowed toward an 
enemy, and what is forbidden. 

" If we forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also 



REVENGE. 109 

forgive you : but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will 
your Father forgive your trespasses." — " And his lord Vi^as wrath, and 
delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto 
him J so likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye 
from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses." 
*' Put on bowels of mercy, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long- 
suffering : forbearing one another, forgiving one another, if any man 
have a quarrel against any : even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye." 
'* Be patient towards all men ; see that none render evil for evil to any 
man." — " Avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath : for 
it is written. Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord. There- 
fore, if thine enemy hunger, feed him ; if he thirst, give him drink : for 
in so doing thou shalt heap coals of lire on his head. Be not overcome 
of evil, but overcome evil with good."* 

I think it evident, from some of these passages taken separately, and 
still more so from all of them together, that revenge^ as described in the 
beginning of this chapter, is forbidden in every degree, under all forms, 
and upon every occasion. We are likewise forbidden to refuse to an 
enemy even the most imperfect right ; ''If he hunger, feed him ; if he 
thirst, give him drink ;"t which are examples of imperfect rights. It 
one who has offended us solicit from us a vote which his qualifications 
entitle him, we may not refuse it from motives of resentment, or the re- 
membrance of what we have suffered at his hands. His right, and our 
obligation which follows the right, are not altered by his enmity to us, 
or by ours to him. 

On the other hand, I do not conceive that these prohibitions were in- 
tended to interfere with the punishment or prosecution of public offen- 
ders. In the eighteenth chapter of St. Matthew, our Saviour tells his 
disciples • "If thy brother who has trespassed against thee neglect to 
hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man, and a publi- 
can." Immediately after this, when St. Peter asked him, " How oft 
shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him ? till seven times '?" 
Christ replied, " I say not unto thee until seven times, but until seventy 
times seven ;" that is, as often as he repeats the offence. From these 
two adjoining passages, compared together, we are authorized to con- 
clude that the forgiveness of an enemy is not inconsistent with the pro- 
ceeding against him as a public offender ; and that the discipline esta- 
blished in religious or civi] societies for the restraint or punishment of 
criminals ought to be upholden. 

If the magistrate be not tied down with these prohibitions from the 
execution of his office, neither is the prosecutor ; for the office of the 
prosecutor is as necessary as that of the magistrate. 

Nor, by parity of reason, are private persons withholden from the cor- 

♦ Matt. vi. 14, 15 : xviii. 34, 35. Col. iii. 12, 13. 1 Thess. v. 14, 15. Rom. xii. 19, 
20, »1. 

t See also Exodus, xxiii. 4. "If thou meet thine enemy's ox, or his ass, going 
astray, thou shalt surely bring it back to him again: if thou see the ass of him that 
hateth thee, lying under his burden, and wouldest forbear to help him, thou shalt 
surely help with him." 



110 DUELLING. 

rection of vice, when it is in their power to exercise it ; provided they 
be assured that it is the guilt which provokes them, and not the injury; 
and that their motives are pure from all mixture and every particle of 
that spirit which delights and triumphs in the humiliation of an adver- 
sary. 

Thus, it is no breach of Christian charity to withdraw our company 
or civility when the same tends to discountenance any vicious practice. 
This is one branch of that extrajudicial discipline, which supplies the 
defects and the remissness of law : and is expressly authorized by St. 
Paul, (1 Cor. V. 11 :) •' But now I have written unto you not to keep 
company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or cove- 
tous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner ; with 
such an one, no not to eat." The use of this association against vice 
continues to be experienced in one remarkable instance, and might be 
extended with good effect to others. The confederacy among women of 
character, to exclude from their society kept-mistresses and prostitutes, 
contributes more perhaps to discourage that condition of hfe, and pre- 
vents greater numbers from entering into it, than all the considerations 
of prudence and religion put together. 

We are likewise allowed to practice so much caution, as not to put 
ourselves in the way of injury or invite the repetition of it. If a ser- 
vant or tradesman has cheated us, we are not bound to trust him again : 
for this is to encourage him in his dishonest practices, which is doing 
him much harm. 

Where a benefit can be conferred only upon one or few, and the 
choice of the person upon whom it is conferred is a proper object of 
favor, we are at liberty to prefer those who have not offendod us to 
those who have ; the contrary being nowhere required. 

Christ, who, as hath been well demonstrated,* estimated virtues by 
their solid utility, and not by their fashion or popularity, prefers this of 
the forgiveness of injuries to every other. He enjoins it oftener ', with 
more earnestness; under a greater variety of forms; and with this 
weighty and peculiar circumstance, that the forgiveness of others is the 
condition upon which alone we are to expect, or even ask, from God, 
forgiveness for ourselves. And this preference is justified by the supe- 
rior importance of the virtue itself. The feuds and animosities in fami- 
lies, and between neighbors, which disturb the intercourse of human life, 
and collectively compose half the misery of it, have their foundation in 
the want of a forgiving temper ; and can never cease, but by the exer- 
cise of this virtue on one side, or on both. 



CHAPTER IX. 

DUELLING. 

Duelling as a punishment is absurd ; because it is an equal chance, 
whether the punishment fall upon the offender, or the person offended. 

* See a View of the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion. 



DUELLING. Ill 

Nor is it much better as a reparation ; it being difficult to explain in 
what the satisfaction consists, or how it tends to undo the injury, or to 
afford a compensation for the damage already sustained. 

The truth is, it is not considered as either. A law of honor having 
annexed the imputation of cowardice to patience under an affront, chal- 
lenges are given and accepted with no other design than to prevent or 
wipe off this suspicion ; without malice against the adversary, general- 
ly without a wish to destroy him, or any other concern than to preserve 
the duellist's own reputation and reception in the world. 

The unreasonableness of this rule of manners is one consideration ] 
the duty and conduct of individuals, while such a rule exists, is another. 

As to which, the proper and single question is this : whether a regard 
for our own reputation is, or is not, sufficient to justify the taking away 
the life of another. 

Murder is forbidden ] and wherever human life is deliberately taken 
away, otherwise than by public authority, there is murder. The value 
and security of human life make this rule necessary * for I do not see 
what other idea or definition of murder can be admitted, which will not 
let in so much private violence as to render society a scene of peril and 
bloodshed. 

If unauthorized laws of honor be allowed to create exceptions to di- 
vine prohibitions, there is an end of all morality, as founded in the will 
of the Deity ; and the obligation of every duty may, at one time or other, 
be discharged by the caprice and fluctuations of fashion. 

" But a sense of shame is so much torture ] and no relief presents it- 
self otherwise than by an attempt upon the life of our adversary." 
What then ? The distress which men suffer by the want of money is 
oftentimes extreme, and no resource can be discovered but that of re- 
moving a life which stands between the distressed person and his in- 
heritance. The motive in this case is as urgent, and the means much 
the same as in the former : yet this case finds no advocate. 

Take away the circumstance of the duellist's exposing his own life, 
and it becomes assassination ; add this circumstance, and what differ- 
ence does it make ] None but this, that fewer perhaps will imitate the 
example, and human life will be somewhat more safe, when it cannot 
be attacked without equal danger to the aggressors own. Experience, 
however, proves that there is fortitude enough in most men to under- 
take this hazard ] and were it otherwise, the defence, at best, would be 
only that which a highv/ayman or housebreaker might plead, whose 
attempt had been so daring and desperate, that few were likely to re- 
peat the same. 

In expostulating with the duellist, I all along suppose his adversary 
to fall. Which supposition I am at liberty to make, because, if he 
have no right to kill his adversary, he has none to attempt it. 

In return, I forbear from applying to the case of duelling the Chris- 
tian principle of the forgiveness of injuries : because it is possible to 
suppose the injury to be forgiven, and the duellist to act entirely from 
a concern for his own reputation : where this is not the case, the guilt 
of duelling is manifest, and is greater. 



112 LITIGATION. 

In this view it seems unnecessary to distinguish between him who 
gives and him who accepts, a challenge : for, on the one hand, they in- 
cur an equal hazard of destroying life ] and on the other, both act upon 
the same persuasion, that what they do is necessary, in order to recov- 
er or preserve the good opinion of the world. 

Public opinion is not easily controlled bv civil institutions : for which 
reason I question whether any regulations can be contrived of suffi- 
cient force to suppress or change the rule of honor, which stigmatizes 
all scruples about duelling with the reproach of cowardice. 

The insufficiency of the redress which the law of the land affords, 
for those injuries which chiefly affect a man in his sensibility and repu- 
tation, tempts many to redress themselves. Prosecutions for such of- 
fences, by the trifling damages that are recovered, serve only to make 
the sufferer more ridiculous. This ought to be remedied. 

For the army, where the point of honor is cultivated with exquisite 
attention and refinement, I would establish a Court of Honor, with a 
power of awarding those submissions and acknowledgments, which it 
is generally the purpose of a challenge to obtain • and it might grow 
into a fashion, with persons of rank of all professions, to refer their 
quarrels to this tribunal. 

Duelling, as the law now stands, can seldom be overtaken by legal 
punishment. The challenge, appointment, and other previous circum- 
stances which indicate the intention with which the combatants met, 
being suppressed, nothing appears to a court of justice but the actual 
rencounter : and if a person be slain when actually fighting with his 
adversary, the law deems his death nothing more than manslaughter. 



CHAPTER X. 

LITIGATION. 

'• If it be possible^ live peaceably with all men ;" which precept con- 
tains an indirect confession that this is not always possible. 

The instances* in the fifth chapter of St. Matthew are rather to be 
understood as proverbial methods of describing the general duties of 
forgiveness and benevolence, and the temper which we ought to aim 
at acquiring, than as .directions to be specifically observed, or of them- 
selves of any great importance to be observed. The first of these is, 
*' If thine enemy smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other 
also ;" yet, when one of the officers struck Jesus with the palm of his 
hand, we find Jesus rebuking him ior the outrage with becoming indig- 
nation : " If I have spoken evil, bear witness of the evil * but if well, 
why smitest thou me ?" (John, xviii. 23.) It may be observed, like- 



♦ " Whoever sliall smite thee on fhy right choclr, turn to him the other also ; and 
if any inaa will suo thee at tho law, and take away thy coat, lot hira have thy cloak 
also J and whosoever shall compel theo to go a mile, go \cith him tv/ain." 



LITIGATION. 113 

wise, that the several examples are drawn from instances ol ^mall and 
tolerable injuries. A rule which forbade all opposition to injury, or de- 
fence against it, could have no other effect than to put the good in sub- 
jection to the bad, and deliver one half of mankind to the depredation 
of the jther half ] which must be the case, so long as some considered 
themselves as bound by such a rule, while others despised it. St. Paul, 
though no one inculcated forgiveness and forbearance with a deeper 
sense of the value and obhgation of these virtues, did not interpret either 
of them to require an unresisting submission to every contumely, or ne 
gleet of the means of safety and self-defence. He took refuge in the 
laws of his counUy, and in the privileges of a Roman citizen, from the 
conspiracy of the Jews (Acts, xxv. 11 •) and from the clandestine vio- 
lence of the chief captain. (Acts, xxii. 25.) And yet this is the same 
apostle who reproved the litigiousness of his Corinthian converts with 
so much severity. " Now, therefore, there is utterly a fault among you, 
Decause ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take 
wrong ? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded V 

On the other hand, therefore, Christianity excludes all vindictive mo- 
tives, and all frivolous causes of prosecution * so that where the injury 
is small, where no good purpose of public example is answered, where 
forbearance is not likely to invite a repetition of the injury, or where 
the expense of an action becomes a punishment too severe for the of- 
fence ; there the Christian is withholden by the authority of his religion 
from going to law. 

Oil the other hand, a lawsuit is ijiconsistent with no rule of the gos- 
pel, wlien it is instituted — 

1. For the establishing of some, important right. 

2. For the procuring a compensation for some considerable damage. 

3. For the preventing of future injury. 

But, since it is supposed to be undertaken simply with a view to the 
ends of justice and safety, the prosecutor of the action is bound to con- 
fnie himself to the cheapest process which will accomplish these ends, 
as well as to consent to any peaceable expedient for the same purpose ; 
as to a reference^ in which the arbitrators can do what the law cannot, 
divide the damage when the fault is mutual : or to a compounding of 
the dispute^ by accepting a compensation in the gross without entering 
into articles and items, which it is often very difficult to adjust sepa- 
rately. 

As to the rest, the duty of the contending parties may be expressed 
in the following directions : 

Not by appeals to prolong a suit against your own conviction. 

Not to undertake to defend a suit against a poor adversary, or render 
it more dilatory or expensive than necessary, with the hope of intimi- 
dating or wearying him out by the expense. 

Not to influence evidence by authority or expectation ] 

Nor to stifle any in your possession, although it make against you. 

Hilberto we have treated of civil actions. In criminal prosecutions, 
the private injury should be forgotten, and the prosecutor proceed with 
the same temper, and upon the same motives as the magistrate : the one 



114 GRATITUDE. 

being a necessary minister of justice as well as the other, and both 
bound to direct their conduct by a dispassionate care of the public 
welfare. 

In whatever degree the punishment of an offender is conducive, or his 
escape dangerous to the interest of the community, in the same degree 
is the party against whom the crime was committed bound to prosecute, 
because such prosecutions must in their nature originate from the 
sufferer. 

Therefore great public crimes, as robberies, forgeries, and the like, 
ought not to be spared, from an apprehension of trouble or expense in 
carrying on the prosecution, from false shame, or misplaced compassion. 

There are many offences, such as nuisances, neglect of public roads, 
forestalling, engrossing, smuggling. Sabbath-breaking, profaneness, 
drunkenness, prostitution, the keeping of lewd or disorderly/ houses, the 
writing, publishing, or exposing to sale lascivious books or pictures, 
with some others, the prosecution of which, being of equal concern to 
the whole neighborhood, cannot be charged as a peculiar obligation 
upon any. 

Nevertheless, there is great merit in the person who undertakes such 
prosecutions upon proper motives ; which amounts to the same thing. 

The character of an informer is in this country undeservedly odious. 
But where any public advantage is likely to be attained by information 
or other activity in promoting the execution of the laws, a good man 
will despise the prejudice founded in no just reason, or will acquit him- 
self of the imputation of interested designs by giving away his share of 
the penalty. 

On the other hand, prosecutions for the sake of the reward, or for the 
gratification of private enmity, where the offence produces no public 
mischief, or where it arises from ignorance or inadvertency, are repro- 
bated under the general description of applying a rule of law to a pur- 
pose for which it was not intended. 

Under which description may be ranked an officious revival of the 
laws against popish priests and dissenting teachers. 



CHAPTER XI. 



GRATITUDE. 

Examples of ingratitude check and discourage voluntary beneficence : 
and in this the mischief of ingratitude consists. Nor is the mischief 
small : for after all is done that can be done towards providing for the 
public happiness, by prescribing rules of justice, and enforcing the ob- 
servation of them by penalties or compulsion, much must be left to those 
offices of kindness which men remain at liberty to exert or withhold. 
Now, not only the choice of the objects, but the quantity, and even the 
existence of this sort of kindness in the world, depends, in a great mea- 



SLANDER. 115 

ure, upon the return which it receives : and this is a consideration of 
general importance. 

A second reason for cultivating a grateful temper in ourselves is the 
following : The same principle which is touched with the kindness of 
a human benefactor is capable of being affected by the Divine goodness, 
and of becoming, under the influence of that affection, a source of the 
purest and most exalted virtue. The love of God is the sublimest gra- 
titude. It is a mistake, therefore, to imagine that this virtue is omitted 
in the Christian Scriptures; for every precept which commands us "to 
love God, because he first loved us," presupposes the principle of grati 
tude, and directs it to its proper object. 

It is impossible to particularize the several expressions of gratitude, 
inasmuch as they vary with the character and situation of the benefac- 
tor, and with the opportunities of the person obliged ; which variety 
admits of no bounds. 

It may be observed, however, that gratitude can never oblige a man 
to do what is wrong, and what by consequence he is previously obliged 
not to do. It is no ingratitude to refuse to do what we cannot reconcile 
to any apprehensions of our duty ] but it is ingratitude and hypocrisy 
together, to pretend this reason, when it is not the real one : and the 
frequency of such pretences has brought this apology for non-compli- 
ance with the will of a benefactor into unmerited disgrace. 

It has long been accounted a violation of delicacy and generosity to 
upbraid men with the favors they have received : but it argues a total 
destitution of both these qualities, as well as of moral probity, to take 
advantage of that ascendency which the conferring of benefits justly 
creates, to draw or drive those whom we have obliged into mean or dis- 
honest compliances. 



CHAPTER XII. 



Speaking is acting, both in philosophical strictness and as to all 
moral purposes : for if the mischief and motive of our conduct be the 
same, the means which we use make no difference. 

And this is in effect what our Saviour declares. Matt. xii. 37 : "By 
thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be con- 
demned :" by thy words, as well, that is, as by thy actions ; the one 
shall be taken into the account as well as the other, for they both pos- 
sess the same property of voluntarily producing good or evil. 

Slander may be distinguished into two kinds : malicious slander, and 
inconsiderate slander. 

Malicious slander is the relating of either truth or falsehood, for the 
purpose of creating misery. 

I acknowledge that the truth or falsehood of what is related varies 
the degree of guilt considerably ; and that slander, in the ordinary ac- 



116 SLANDER. 

ceptation of the term, signifies the circulation of mischiey ous falsehoods : 
but truth may be made instrumental to the success of malicious designs 
as well as falsehood : and if the end be bad, the means cannot be in- 
nocent. 

I think the idea of slander ought to be confined to the production of 
gratuitous mischief. When we have an end or interest of our own to 
serve, if we attempt to compass it by falsehood, it is fraud ; if by a 
publication of the truth, it is not, without some additional circumstance 
of breach of promise, betraying of confidence, or the like, to be deemed 
criminal. 

Sometimes the pain is intended for the person to whom we are speak- 
ing : at other times, an enmity is to be gratified by the prejudice or dis- 
quiet of a third person. To infuse suspicions, to kindle or continue dis- 
putes, to avert the favor and esteem of benefactors from their depen- 
dents, to render some one whom we dislike contemptible or obnoxious 
in the public opinion, are all offices of slander ; of which the guilt 
must be measured by the intensity and extent of the misery produced. 

The disguises under which slander is conveyed, whether in a whis- 
per, with injunctions of secrecy, by way of caution, or with affected re- 
luctance, are all so many aggravations of the offence, as they indicate 
more deliberation and design. 

Inconsiderate slander is a different offence, although the same mis- 
chief actually follow, and although the mischief might have been fore- 
seen. The not being conscious of that design which we have hitherto 
attributed to the slanderer, makes the difference. 

The guilt here consists in the want of that regard to the consequences 
of our conduct, which a just affecvion for human happiness, and con- 
cern for our duty, would not have failed to have produced in us. And 
it is no answer to this crimination to oay, that we entertained no evil 
design. A servant may be a very bad servant, and yet seldom or ne- 
ver design to act in opposition to his master's interest or will : and his 
master may justly punish such servant for a thoughtlessness and ne- 
glect nearly as prejudicial as deliberate disobedience. I accuse you not, 
he may say, of any express intention to hurt me ] but had not the fear 
of my displeasure, the care of my interest, and indeed all the qualities? 
which constitute the merit of a good servant, been wanting in you, they 
Would not only have excluded every direct purpose of giving me un- 
easiness, but have been so far present to your thoughts as to have 
checked that unguarded licentiousness by which I have suffered so 
much, and inspired you in its place with an habitiial solicitude about 
the effects and tendency of what you did or said. This very much re- 
sembles the case of all sins of inconsi deration ; and, among the fore- 
most of these, that of inconsiderate slander. 

Information communicated for the real purpose of warning, or cau- 
tioning, is not slander. 

Indiscriminate praise is the opposite of slander, but it is the opposite 
extreme ; and, however it may effect to be thought excess of candor, is 
commonly the effusion of a frivolous understanding, or proceeds from a 
settled contempt of all moral distinctions. 



BOOK III. 



PART III. 

OF. RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH RESULT FROM THE 
CONSTITUTION OF THE SEXES. 

The constitution of the sexes is the foundation of marriage. 

Collateral to the subject of marriage are fornication, seduction, adul- 
tery, incest, polygamy, divorce. 

Consequential to marriage is the relation and reciprocal duty of pa- 
rent and child. 

We will treat of these subjects in the following order : first, of the 
public use of marriage institutions; secondly, of the subjects collateral 
to marriage, in the order in which we have here proposed them ; third- 
ly, of marriage itself ; and lastly, of the relation and reciprocal duties 
")f parents and children. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF THE PUBLIC USE OF MARRIAGE INSTITUTIONS. 

The public use of marriage institutions consists in their promoting 
the following beneficial effects. 

1. The private comfort of individuals, especially of the female sex. 
[t may be true, that all are not interested in this reason ; nevertheless, 
it is a reason to all for abstaining from any conduct which tends in its 
general consequence to obstruct marriage ; for whatever promotes the 
happiness of the majority is binding upon .the whole. 

2. The production of the greatest number of healthy children, their 
better education, and the making of due provision for their settlement in life. 

3. The peace of human society, in cutting off a principal source of 
contention, by assigning one or more women to one man, and protect- 
ing his exclusive right by sanctions of morality and law. 

4. The better government of society, by distributing the community 
into separate families, and appointing over each the authority of a mas- 
ter of a family, which has more actual influence than all civil authority 
put together. 

5. The same end. in the additional securitv which the state receives 



118 FORNICATION. 

for the good behavior of its citizens, from the solicitude they feel for the 
welfare of their children, and from their being confined to permanent 
habitations. 

6. The encouragement of industry. 

Some ancient nations appear to have been more sensible of the im- 
portance of marriage institutions than we are. The Spartans obliged 
their citizens to marry by penalties, and the Romans encouraged theii-s 
by the jus trium liberorum. A man who had no child was entitled, by 
the Roman law, only to one half of any legacy that should be left him, 
that is, at the most, could only receive one half of the testator's fortune. 



CHAPTER II. 

FORNICATION. 

The lirst and great mischief, and by consequence the guilt of pro- 
miscuous concubinage, consists in its tendency to diminish marriages, 
and thereby to defeat the several beneficial purposes enumerated in the 
preceding chapter. 

Promiscuous concubinage discourages marriage, by abating the chief 
temptation to it. The male part of the species will not undertake the 
incumbrance, expense, and restraint of married life, if they can gratify 
their passions at a cheaper price ; and they will undertake anything, 
rather than not gratify them. 

The reader will learn to comprehend the magnitude of this mischief, 
by attending to the importance and variety of the uses to which mar- 
riage is subservient ; and by recollecting withal, that the malignity and 
moral quality of each crime is not to be estimated by the particular ef- 
fect of one offence, or of one person's offending, but by the general ten- 
dency and consequence of crimes of the same nature. The libertine 
may not be conscious that these irregularities hinder his own marriage, 
from which he is deterred, he may allege, by different considerations 3 
much less does he perceive how his indulgences can hinder other men 
from marrying ; but what will he say would be the consequence, if the 
same licentiousness were universal ? or what should hinder it becoming 
universal, if it be innocent or allowable in him ? 

2. Fornication supposes prostitution; and prostitution brings and 
leaves the victims of it to almost certain misery. It is no small quan- 
tity of misery in the aggregate, which, between want, disease, and in- 
sult, is suffered by those outcasts of human society who infest popu- 
lous cities ; the whole of which is a general consequence of fornication, 
and to the increase and continuance of which every act and instance of 
fornication contributes. 

3. Fornication* produces habits of ungovernable lewdness, which 



* Of this passion it has been truly said, that " irregularity has no limits ; that one 
excess draws on another ; that the most easy, therefore, as well as the most excellent 
way of bein^ virtuous, is to be so entirely." Ogden, Sermon xvi. 



FORNICATION. 119 

introduce the more aggravated crimes of seduction, adultery, viola* 
tion^ &c. Likewise, however it be accounted for, the criminal com- 
merce of the sexes corrupts and depraves the mind and moral character 
more than any single species of vice whatsoever. That ready percep- 
tion of guilt, that prompt and decisive resolution against it, which con- 
stitutes a virtuous character, is seldom found in persons addicted to 
these indulgences. They prepare an easy admission for every sin that 
seeks it ] are, in low life, usually the first stage in men's progress to 
the most desperate villanies • and, in high life, to that lamented disso- 
luteness of principle which manifests itself in a profligacy of public 
conduct, and a contempt of the obligations of religion and of moral 
probity. Add to this, that habits of libertinism incapacitate and indis- 
pose the mind for all intellectual, moral, and religious pleasures* which 
is a great loss to any man's happiness. 

4. Fornication perpetuates a disease, which may be accounted one 
of the sorest maladies of human nature ] and the eflects of which are 
said to visit the constitution of even distant generations. 

The passion being natural, proves that it was intended to be gratifi- 
ed; but under what restrictions, or whether without any, must be 
collected from different considerations. 

The Christian Scriptures condemn fornication absolutely and pe- 
remptorily. " Out of the heart," says our Saviour, " proceed evil 
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornication^ thefts, false witness, blas- 
phemies ] these are the things which defile a man." These are Christ's 
own words : and one word from him upon the subject is final. It may 
be observed with what society fornication is classed ; with murders, 
thefts, false witness, blasphemies. I do not mean that these crimes are 
all equal, because they are all mentioned together ) but it proves that 
they are all crimes. The apostles are more full upon this topic. One 
well known passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews may stand in the 
place of all others ] because, admittmg the authority by which the 
apostles of Christ spake and wrote, it is decisive : '^ Marriage, and the 
bed undefiled, is honorable, among all men ] but whoremongers and 
adulterers God will judge ;" which was a great deal to say, at a time 
when it was not agreed, even among philosophers themselves, that 
fornication was a crime. 

The Scriptures give no sanction to those austerities which liave been 
since imposed upon the world under the name of Christ's religion ] as 
the celibacy of the clergy, the praise of perpetual virginity, the prohibit 
tio concubitus cum gravida uxore ; but, with a just knowledge of, and 
regard to the condition and interest of the human species, have provided, 
in the marriage of one man with one woman, an adequate gratification 
for the propensities of their nature, and have restricted them to that 
gratification. 

The avowed toleration, and in some countries the licensing, taxing, 
and regulating of public brothels,^has appeared to the people an author- 
izing of fornication ; and has contributed, with other causes, so far to 
vitiate the public opinion, that there is no practice of which the im- 
morality is so little thought of or acknowledged, although there are 



i^O FORNICATION. 

few in which it can more plainly be made out. The legislators who 
have patronized receptacles of prostitution ought to have foreseen this 
effect, as well as considered, that whatever facilitates fornication, 
diminishes marriages. And, as to the usual apology for this relaxed 
discipline, the danger of greater enormities, if access to prostitutes were 
too strictly watched and prohibited, it will be time enough to look to 
that when the laws and the magistrates have done their utmost. The 
greatest vigilance of both will do no more than oppose some bounds 
and some difficulties to this intercourse. And, after all, these pretend- 
ed fears are without foundation in experience. The men are in all re- 
spects the most virtuous, in countries where the women are most chaste. 

There is a species of cohabitation, distinguishable, no doubt, from 
vagrant concubinage, and which, by reason of its resemblance to mar- 
riage, may be thought to participate of the sanctity and innocence of 
that estate ; I mean the case of kept mistresses^ under the favorable cir- 
cumstance of mutual fidelity. This case I have heard defended by 
some such apology as the following : — 

*' That the marriage-rite, being different in different countries, and in 
the same country among different sects, and with some scarce anything : 
and, moreover, not being prescribed, or even mentioned in Scripture, 
can be accounted for only as of a form and ceremony of human inven- 
tion • that, consequently, if a man and w^oman betroth and confine 
themselves to each other, their intercourse must be the same, as to all 
aioral purposes, as if they w^ere legally married ] for the addition or 
amission of that which is a mere form and ceremony can make no dif- 
ierence in the sight of God, or in the actual nature of right and wrong." 

To all which it may be replied, 

1 . If the situation of the parties be the same thing as marriage, why 
lo they not marry ? 

2. If the man choose to have it in his power to dismiss the woman 
xt his pleasure, or to retain her in a state of humiliation and depen- 
dence inconsistent with the rights which marriage would confer upon 
Aer, it is not the same thing. 

It is not, at any rate, the same thing to the children. 

Again, as to the marriage- rite being a mere form, and that also vari- 
able, the same may be said of signing and sealing of bonds, wills, deeds 
of conveyance, and the like, which yet make a great difl^erence in the 
rights and obligations of the parties concerned in them. 

And with respect to the rite not being appointed in Scripture — the 
Scriptures forbid fornication, that is, cohabition without marriage, leav- 
ing it to the law of each country to pronounce what is, or what makes 
a marriage ; in like manner as they forbid thefts, that is, the taking 
away of another's property, leaving it to the municipal law to fix what 
makes the thing property, or whose it is ] which also, as well as mar- 
riage, depend upon arbitrary and mutable forms. 

Laying aside the injunctions of Scripture, the plain account of the 
question seems to be this : It is immoral, because it is pernicious, that 
men and women should cohabit, without undertaking certain irrevoca- 
ble obligations, and mutually conferring certain civil rights ] if, there* 



SEDUCTION. 121 

fore, the law has annexed these rights and obligations to certain forms, 
so that they cannot be secured or undertaken by any other means, 
which is the case here (for whatever the parties may promise to each 
other, nothing but the marriage ceremony can make their promise irre- 
vocable,) it becomes in the same degree immoral that men and women 
should cohabit without the interposition of these forms. 



If fornication be criminal, all those incentives which lead to it aie 
accessaries to the crime ; as lascivious conversation, whether express- 
ed in obscene or disguised under modest phrases ] also wanton songs, 
pictures, books; the writing, publishing, and circulating of which, whe- 
ther out of frolic, or for pitiful profit, is productive of so extensive a 
mischief, from so mean a temptation, that few crimes within the reach 
of private wickedness have more to answer for, or less to plead in their 
excuse. 

Indecent conversation, and, by parity of reason, all the rest are for- 
bidden by St. Paul, Eph. iv. 29, "Let no corrupt communication pro- 
ceed out of your mouth ;" and again, Col. iii. 8, " Put off— filthy 
communication out of your mouth." 

The invitation, or voluntary admission of impure thoughts, or the 
suffering them to get possession of the imagination, falls within the 
same description, and is condemned by Christ, Matt. v. 28. " Whoso- 
3ver looketh on a w^oman to lust after her, hath committed adultery 
Niih. her already in his heart." 

Christ, by thus enjoining a regulation of the thoughts, strikes at the 
oot of the evil. 



CHAPTER m. 

SEDUCTION. i 

The seducer practices the same stratagems to draw a woman's per- 
son into his power, that a swindler does to get possession of your goods 
or money: yet the /ai^ o/ /iono?-, which abhors deceit, applauds the 
address of a successful intrigue : so much is this capricious rule guided 
by names, and with such facility does it accommodate itself to the 
pleasures and conveniency of higher life ! 

Seduction is seldom accomplished without fraud ] and the fraud is 
by so much more criminal than other frauds, as the injury effected by 
it is greater, continues longer, and less admits reparation. 

This injury is threefold : to the woman, to her family, and to the 
public. 

1. The injury to the woman is made up of the pain she suffers from 
shame, or the loss she sustains in her reputation and prospects of mar- 
/iage, and of the depravation of her moral principle. 

F 



122 SEDUCTION. 

1 . This pain must be extreme, if we may judge of it from those bar- 
barous endeavors to conceal their disgrace, to which women, undei 
such circumstances, sometimes have recourse ; comparing also this 
barbarity with their passionate fon,dness for their offspring in other 
cases. Nothing but an agony of mind the most insupportable can in- 
duce a woman to forget her nature, and the pity which even a stranger 
would show to a helpless and imploring infant. It is true, that all are 
not urged to this extremity ; but if any are, it affords an indication of 
hov/ much all suffer from the same cause. What shall we say to the 
authors of such mischief 1: 

2. The /o.s.9 which a woman sustains by the ruin of her reputation 
almost exceeds computation. Every person's happiness depends in 
part upon the respect and reception which they meet with in the world ) 
and it is no inconsiderable mortification even to the firmest tempers, to 
be rejected from the society of their equals, or received there with ne- 
glect and disdain. But this is not all, nor the worst. By a rule of 
life, which it is not easy to blame, and which it is impossible to alter, 
a woman loses with her chastity the chance of marrying at all, or in 
any manner equal to the hopes she had been accustomed to entertain. 
Now marriage, whatever it be to a man, is that from which every wo- 
man expects her chief happiness. And this is still more true in low 
life, of which condition the women are who are most exposed to solici- 
tations of this sort. Add to this, that where a woman's maintenance 
depends upon her character (as it does, in a great measure, with those 
who are to support themselves by service,) little sometimes is left to the 
forsaken sufferer, but to starve for want of employment, or to have re- 
course to prostitution for food and raiment. 

3. As a woman collects her virtue into this point, the loss of her 
chastity is generally the destruction of her moral "principle ; and this 
consequence is to be apprehended, whether the criminal intercourse be 
discovered or not. 

4. The injury to the family may be understood by the application ol 
that infallible rule " of doing to others what we would that others 
should do unto us." Let a father or a brother say for what considera- 
tion they would suffer this injury to a daughter or a sister, and whether 
any, or even a total loss of fortune, could create equal affliction and 
distress. And when they reflect upon this, let them distinguish, if they 
can, between a robbery committed upon their property by fraud or for- 
gery, and the ruin of their happiness by the treachery of a seducer. 

5. The public at large lose the benefit of the woman's service in her 
proper place and destination, as a wife and parent. This, to the whole 
community, may be little ; but it is often more than all the good which 
the seducer does to the com.munity can recompense. Moreover, pros- 
titution is supplied by seduction ; and in proportion to the danger there 
is of the woman's betaking herself, after her first sacrifice, to a life of 
public lewdness, the seducer is answerable for the multiphed evils to 
which his crime gives birth. 

Upon the \vhole, if we pursue the effects of seduction through the 
complicated miisery which it occasions, and if it be right to estimate 



ADULTERY. 12? 

crimes by the mischief they knowingly produce, it will appear some- 
thing more than mere invective to assert that not one half of the crimes 
for vvhich men suffer death by the laws of England are so flagitious as 
this.* 



CHAPTER IV. 

ADULTERY. 

A NEW sufferer is introduced, — the injured husband, who receives a 
wound in his sensibility and affections, the most painful and incurable 
that human nature knows. In all other respects, adultery, on the part 
of the man who solicits the chastity of a married woman, includes the 
crime of seduction, and is attended with the same mischief. 

The infidelity of the woman is aggravated by cruelty to her children, 
who are generally involved in their parents' shame, and always made 
unhappy by their quarrel. 

If it be said that these consequences are chargeable not so much 
upon the crime as the discovery • we answer, first, that the crime could 
not be discovered unless it were committed, and that the commission 
is never secure from discovery; and, secondly, that if we excuse 
adulterous connexions, whenever they can hope to escape detec- 
tion, which is the conclusion to v/hich this argument conducts us, 
we leave the husband no other security for his wife's chastity than in 
her want of opportunity or temptation ; which would probably either 
deter men from marrying, or render marriage a state of such jealousy 
and alarm to the husband as must end in the slavery and confinement 
of the wife. 

The vow, by which married persons mutually engage their fidelity, 
'•is witnessed before God." and accompanied with circumstances of 
solemnity and religion, which approach the nature of an oath. The 
married offender therefore incurs a crime little short of perjury, and the 
seduction of a married woman is little less than subornation of perjury; 
— and this guilt is independent of the discovery. 

All behavior which is designed, or which knowingly tends to capti- 
vate the affections of a married woman, is a barbarous intrusion upon 
the peace and virtue of a family, though it fall short of adultery. 

The usual and only apology for adultery is the prior transgression of 
the other party. There are degrees, no doubt, in this, as in other 
crimes ] and so far as the bad effects of adultery are anticipated by the 
conduct of the husband or wife who offends first, the guilt of the second 
offender is less. But this falls very far short of a justification ] unless it 



• Yet the law has provided no punishment for this offence beyond a pecuniary satis- 
faction to the injured family : and this can only be come at by one of the quaintest 
fictions in the world — by the father's bringing his action against the seducer, for the 
loss of his daughters service, during her pregnancy and nurturing. 



124 ADULTERY. 

could be shown that the obligation ot the marriage vow depends upon 
the condition of reciprocal fidelity : for which construction there ap- 
pears no foundation either in expediency, or in the terms of the promise, 
or in the design of the legislature which prescribed the marriage rite. 
Moreover, the rule contended for by this plea has a manifest tendency 
to multiply the offence, but none to reclaim the offender. 

The way of considering the offence of one party as provocation to 
the other, and the other as only retaliating the injury by repeating the 
crime, is a childish trifling with words. 

" Thou shalt not commit adultery," w^as an interdict delivered by God 
himself. By the Jewish law, adultery was capital to both parties in 
the crime : " Even he that committeth adultery with his neighbor's 
wife, the adulterer and adulteress shall surely be put to death." Levit. 
XX. 10. Which passages prove that the Divine Legislator placed a 
great difference between adultery and fornication. And with this agree 
the Christian Scriptures ; for, in almost all the catalogues they have 
left us of crimes and criminals, they enumerate " fornication, adultery, 
whoremongers, adulterers" (Matthew, xv. 19. 1 Cor. vi. 9. Gal. v. 9. 
Heb. xiii. 4) ; by which mention of both, they show that they did not 
consider them as the same ; but that the crime of adultery was, in their - 
apprehension, distinct from, and accumulated upon that of fornication. 

The history of the woman taken in adultery, recorded in the eighth 
chapter of St. John's Gospel, has been thought by some to give coun- 
tenance to that crime. As Christ told the woman, '' Neither do I con- 
demn thee," we must believe, it is said, that he deemed her conduct 
either not criminal, or not a crime, however, of the heinous nature 
which we represent it to be. A more attentive examination of the 
case will, I think, convince us that from it nothing can be concluded 
as to Christ's opinion concerning adultery, either one way or other. 
This transaction is thus related : " Early in the morning Jesus came 
again into the temple, and all the people cam.e unto him : and he sat 
down and taught them. And the Scribes and Pharisees brought unto 
him a woman taken in adultery ; and when they had set her in the 
midst, they say unto him, Master, this woman was taken in adultery, 
in the very act : now Moses, in the law, commanded that such should 
be stoned ; but what sayest thou ? This they said, tempting him, that 
they might have to accuse him. But Jesus stooped down, and with 
his finger wrote on the ground, as though he heard them not. So when 
they continued asking him, he lift up himself, and said unto them. He 
that is without sin amongst you, let him first cast a stone at her ; and 
again he stooped down, and wrote on the ground : and they which 
heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, 
beginning at the eldest, even unto the last ; and Jesus was left alone, 
and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had lift up him- 
self, and saw none but the woman, he said unto her. Woman, where 
are those thine accusers ? hath no man condemned thee ? She said unto 
him. No man, Lord. And he said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee ; 
go, and sin no more." 

*' 7 his they said tempting him, that they might have to accuse himj" 



INCEST, 12D 

to draw him, that is, into an exercise of judicial authority, that they 
might have to accuse him before the Roman governor, of usurping or 
intermeddling with the civil government. This was their design : and 
Christ- s behavior throughout the whole affair proceeded from a know- 
ledge of this design, and a determination to defeat it. He gives them 
at first a cold and sullen reception, well suited to the insidious intention 
with which they came : " He stooped down, and with his finger wrote 
on the ground, as though he heard them not." " When they continued 
asking him,"' when they teased him to speak, he dismissed them with a 
rebuke, which the impertinent malice of their errand, as well as the 
sacred character of many of them, deserved : *' He that is without sin, 
(that is, this sin) among you, let him first cast a stone at her." This 
had its effect. Stung with the reproof, and disappointed of their aim, 
they stole away one by one, and left Jesus and the woman alone. And 
then follows the conversation which is the part of the narrative most 
material to our present subject. "Jesus said uuto her, Woman, where 
are those thine accusers ? hath no man condemned thee 1 She said, 
No man. Lord. And Jesus said unto her. Neither do I condemn thee : 
go, and sin no more." Now w^hen Christ asked the woman, " Hath 
no man condemned thee ?" he certainly spoke, and was uaderstood by 
the woman to spsak,of a legal and judicial condemnation; otherwise 
her answer, " No man, Lord," was not true. In every other sense of 
condemnation, as blame, censure, reproof, private judgment, and the 
like, many had condemned her ; all those indeed who brought her to 
Jesus. If then a judicial sentence was what Christ meant by condemn- 
ing in the question, the common use of language requires us to suppose 
that he meant the same in his reply : '' Neifher do I condemn thee," 
i. e.l pretend to no judicial character or authority over thee : it is no 
office or business of mine to pronounce or execute the sentence of the 
law. 

When Christ adds, "Go, and sin no more," he in effect tells her that 
she had sinned already : but as to the degree or quality of the sin, or 
Christ's opinion concerning it, nothing is declared, or can be inferred, 
either way. 

Adultery, which was punished with death during the Usurpation, is 
now regarded by the law of England only as a civil injury ; for w^hich 
the imperfect satisfaction that money can afford may be recovered by 
the husband. 



CHAPTER V. 

INCEST. 

In order to preserve chastity in families, and between persons of dif- 
ferent sexes, brought up and living together in a state of unreserved 
intimacy, it is necessary by every method possible to inculcate an ab- 
horrence of incestuous conjunctions: which abhorrence can only be 



126 POLYGAMY. 

upholder! by the absolute reprobation of all commerce of the sexes be- 
tween near relations. Upon this principle, the marriage^ as well as other 
cohabitations of brothers and sisters, of lineal kindred, and of all who 
usually live in the same family, may be said to be forbidden by the law 
of nature. 

Restrictions which extend to remoter degrees of kindred than what 
this reason makes it necessary to prohibit from intermarriage, are found- 
ed in the authority of the positive Jaw which ordains them, and can 
only be justified by their tendency to diffuse wealth, to connect families 
or to promote some political advantage. 

The Levitical law, which is received in this country, and from which 
the rule of the Roman Law differs very little, prohibits* marriage be- 
tween relations within three degrees of kindred • computing the gene- 
rations not from, but through the common ancestor, and accounting 
affinity the same as consanguinity. The issue, however, of such mar- 
riages are not bastardized, unless the parents be divorced during their 
lifetime. 

The Egyptians are said to have allowed of the marriage of brothers 
and sisters. Among the Athenians a very singular regulation prevail- 
ed ; brothers and sisters of the half-blood, if related by the father's side, 
might marry : if by the mother's side, they were prohibited from mar- 
rying. The same custom also probably obtained in Chaldea, so early 
as the age in which Abraham left it ; for he and Sarah his wife stood 
in this relation to each other : " And yet, indeed, she is my sister; she 
is the daughter of my father, but not of my mother ; and she became 
my wife." Gen. xx. 12. 



CHAPTER VL 

POLYGAMY. 

The equalityt in the number of males and females born into the 
world intimates the intention of God, that one woman should be assign- 
ed to one man ; for if to one man be allowed exclusive right to five or 
more women, four or more men must be deprived of the exclusive pos- 
session of any ; which could never be the order intended. 

It seems also a significant indication of the Divine will, that he at 
first created only one woman to one man. Had God intended polyga- 
my for the species, it is probable he would have begun witli it ] espe- 



* The Roman law continued the prohibition to the descendants of brothers and sis- 
ters without limits. In the Levitical and English law there is nothing to hinder a man 
from marrying his great-mece. 

t This equality is not exact. The number of male infants exceedc that of females 
in the proportion of ninet«;en to eighteen, or thereabouts ; whi<''h excess provides for 
the greater consumption of males by war, seafaring, and other dangerous or unhealthy 
occupations. 



POLYGAMY. 127 

cially as, by giving to Adam more wives than one, the multiplication 
of the human race would have proceeded with a quicker progress. 

Polygamy not only violates the constitution of nature, and the appa- 
rent design of the Deity, but produces to the parties themselves, and to 
the public, the following bad effects : contests and jealousies among the 
wives of the same husband ; distracted affections, by the loss of all af- 
fection, in the husband himself : a voluptuousness in the rich which 
dissolves the vigor of their intellectual as well as active faculties, pro- 
ducing that indolence and imbecility both of mind and body, which have 
long characterized the nations of the East ] the abasement of one half 
of the human species, who, in countries where polygamy obtains, are 
degraded into mere instruments of physical pleasure to the other half) 
neglect of children, and the manifold and sometimes unnatural mischiefs 
which arise from a scarcity of women. To compensate for these evils, 
polygamy does not offer a single advantage. In the article of popula- 
tion, which it has been thought to promote, the community gain nothing :=^, 
for the question is not, whether one man w^ill have more children by 
five or more wives than by one • but whether these five waves would 
not bear the same or a greater number of children to five separate hn-- 
bands. And as to the care of the children when produced, and tlic 
sending of them into the world in situations in which they may be likely 
to form and bring up families of their own, upon which the increase 
and succession of the human species in a great degree depend; this is 
less provided for, and less practicable, where twenty or thirty children 
are to be supported by the attention and fortunes of one father, than if 
they were divided into five ar six families, to each of which were as- 
signed the industry and inheritance of two parents. 

Whether simultaneous polygamy was permitted by the law of Mo- 
ses, seems doubtful rf but whether permitted or not, it was certainly 
practiced by the Jewish patriarchs, both before that law, and under it 
The permission, if there was any, might be like that of divorce, '• for 
the hardness of their hearts ;" in condescension to their established iii- 
dulgences, rather than from the general rectitude or propriety of the 
thing itself. The state of manners in Judea had probably undergone a 
reformation in this respect before the time of Christ, for in the New 
Testament we meet with no traca or mention of any such practice being 
tolerated. 



* Nothing I mean, compared with a state in which marriage is nearly universal. 
Where marriages are less general, and many women unfruitful from the want of 
nusbands, polygamy might at first add a little to population -, and but a httle : for, as 
a variety of wives would be sought chiefly from temptstions of voluptuousness, it 
would rather increase the demand for female beauty, tlian lur the sex at large. Ax\<\ 
this little would soon be made less by many deductions. For, first, as none but the 
opulent can maintain a plurality of wives, where polygamy obtains, the rich indulge 
in it, while the rest take up with a vague and barren incontinency. And, secondly, 
women would grow less jealous of their virtue, when they had nothing for which to 
reserve it but a chamber in the harem; when their chastity wa=. no longer to be re- 
warded with the rights and happiness of a wife, as enjoyed under the marriage of one 
woman to one man. These considerations may be adde-J to what is mentioned in tlie 
text, concerning the easy and early settlement of children in the world. 

t See Dent. xvii. 17 ; xxi 15. 



128 POLYGAMY. 

For Avhich reason, and because it was likewise forbidden among the 
Greeks and Romans, we cannot expect to find any express law upon 
the subject in the Christian code. The words of Christ* (Matt, xix, 9) 
may be construed by an easy implication to prohibit polygamy ; for, if 
" whoever putteth away his wife and marrieth another, committeth 
adultery," he who marrieth anoiher without putting away the first, is no 
less guilty of adultery : because the adultery does not consist in the re- 
pudiation of the first wife, (for however unjust or cruel that may be, it 
is not adultery,) but in entering into a second marriage during the legal 
existence and obligation of the first. The several passages in St. Paul's 
writings, which speak of marriage, always suppose it to signify the 
union of one man with one woman. Upon this supposition he argues, 
Rom. vii. 1, 2, 3 : " Know ye not, brethren (for 1 speak to them that 
know the law,) how that the law hath dominion over a man, as long 
as he liveth ] For the woman which hath a husband, is bound by the 
law to her husband so long as he liveth ; but if the husband be dead, 
she is loosed from the law of her husband : so then, if while her hus- 
band liveth she be married to another man, she shall be called an adul- 
teress." When the same apostle permits marriage to his Corinthian 
converts (which, " for the present distress," he judges to be inconveni- 
ent,) he restrains the permission to the marriage of one husband with 
one wife : — '• It is good for a man not to touch a woman : nevertheless, 
to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every 
woman have her own husband." 

The manners of different countries have varied in nothing more than 
in their domestic constitutions. Less polished and more luxurious na- 
tions have either not perceived the bad effects of polygamy, or if they 
did perceive them, they who, in such countries, possessed the power of 
reforming the laws have been unwilling to resign their own gratifica- 
tions. Polygamy is retained at this day among the Turks, and through- 
out every part of Asia in which Christianity is not professed. In Chris- 
tian countries it is universally prohibited. In Sweden it is punished 
with death. In England, besides the nullity of the second marriage, it 
subjects the offender to transportation, or imprisonment and branding for 
the first offence, and to capital punishment for the second. And what- 
ever may be said in behalf of polygamy when it is authorized by the 
law of the land, the marriage of a second wife during the lifetime of the 
first, in countries where such a second marriage is void, must be ranked 
with the most dangerous and cruel of those frauds, by which a woman 
is cheated out of her fortune, her person, and her happiness. 

The ancient Medes compelled their citizens, in one canton, to take 
seven wives ] in another, each woman to receive five husbands : ac- 
cording as war had made, in one quarter of their country, an extraor- 
dinary havoc among the men, or the women had been carried away by 
an enemy from another. This regulation, so far as it was adapted to 



* '• I say unto yon, Whosoever shall put away his wife, except it be for fornication, 
and shall' marry another, committeth adultery." 



DIVORCE. 129 

the proportion which subsisted between the number of males and fe- 
malesjrwas founded in the reason upon which the most improved na- 
tions of Europe proceed at present. 

Caesar found among the inhabitants of this island a species of polyga- 
my, if it may be so called, which was perfectly singular. Uxores, 
says he, habent deni duodenique inter se communes ; et maxime fratres 
cam fratribus parentesque cum liberis : sed, si qui sint exhis nati, eorum, 
habent ur liberie quo primum virgo quceque deducta est. 



CHAPTER VII. 



By divorce^ I mean the dissolution of the marriage contract, by the 
act, and at the will, of the husband. 

This power was allowed to the husband, among the Jews, the Greeks, 
and latter Romans ; and is at this day exercised by the Turks and 
Persians. 

The congruity of such a right with the law of nature is the question 
before us. 

And, in the first place, it is manifestly inconsistent with the duty 
which the parents owe to their children ; which duty can never be so 
well fulfilled as by their cohabitation and united care. It is also incom- 
patible with the right which the mother possesses, as well as the father, 
to the gratitude of her children and the comfort of their society ; of both 
which she is almost necessarily deprived, by her dismission from her 
husband's family. 

Where this objection does not interfere, I know of no principle of the 
law of nature applicable to the question, besides that of general expe- 
diency. 

For, if we say that arbitrary divorces are excluded by the terms ol 
the marriage contract, it may be answered, that the contract might be so 
framed as to admit of this condition. 

If we argue, with some moralists, that the obli^'ion of a contract na- 
turally continues so long as the purpose which the contracting parties 
had in view requires its continuance; it will be difficult to show what 
purpose of the contract (the care of children excepted) should confine a 
man to a woman, from whom he seeks to be loose. 

If we contend, w^ith others, that a contract cannot, by the law of na- 
ture, be dissolved, unless the parlies be placed in the situation which 
each possessed before the contract was entered into ; we shall be called 
upon to prove this to be a universal or indispensable property of con- 
tracts. 

I confess myself unable to assign any circumstance in the marriage 
contract which essentially distinguishes it from other contracts, or 
which proves that it contains, what many have ascribed to it, a natural 
incapacity of being dissolved by the consent of the parties, at the option 

F2 



13C DIVOECE. 

of one of them, or either of them. But if we trace the effects of such a 
rule upon the general happiness of married life, we shall perceive rea- 
sons of expediency, that abundantly justify the policy of those laws 
which refuse to the husband the power of divorce, or restrain it to a few 
extreme and specific provocations : and our principles teach us to pro- 
nounce that to be contrary to the law of nature which can be proved to 
be detrimental to the common happiness of the human species. 

A lawgiver, whose counsels are directed by views of general utility, 
and obstructed by no local impediment, would ma^ the marriage con- 
tract indissoluble during the joint lives of the parties, for the sake of 
the following advantages : 

1 . Because this tends to preserve peace and concord between married 
persons, by perpetuating their common interest and by inducing a ne- 
cessity of mutual compliance. 

There is great weight and substance in both these considerations. 
An earlier termination of the union would produce a separate interest. 
The wife would naturally look forward to the dissolution of the pait- 
nership, and endeavor to draw to herself a fund against the time M'hen 
she was no longer to have access to the same resources. This would 
beget peculation on one side, and mistrust on the other ; evils which at 
present very little disturb the confidence of a married life. The second 
effect .of making the union determinable only by death, is not less bene- 
ficial. It necessarily happens that adverse tempers, habits, and tastes, 
oftentimes meet in marriage. In v/hich case each party must take pains 
to give up what offends, and practice what may gratify the other. A 
man and woman in love with each other do this insensibly : but love 
is neither general nor durable ; and where that is wanting, no lessons 
of duty, no delicacy of sentiment will go half so far with the generality 
of mankind and womankind, as this one intelligible reflection, that they 
must each make the best of their bargain ; and that seeing they must 
either both be miserable, or both share in the same happiness, neither 
2an find their own comfort, but in promoting the pleasure of the other. 
These compliances, though at first extorted by necessity, become in time 
easy and mutual ] and, though less endearing than assiduities which 
take their rise from affection, generally procure to the married pair a 
repose and satisfaction sufficient for their happiness. 

2. Because new objects of desire would be continually sought after, 
if men could, at will, be released from their subsisting engagements. 
Suppose the husband to have once preferred his wife to all other women, 
the duration of this preference cannot be trusted to. Possession makes 
a great difierence : and there is no other security against the invitations 
of novelty, than the known impossibility of obtaining the object. Did 
the cause which brings the sexes together, hold them together by the 
same force with which it first attracted them to each other ] or could 
the woman be restored to her personal integrity, and to all the advan- 
tages of her virgin estate; the power of divorce might be deposited in 
the hands of the husband, with less danger of abuse or inconveniency. 
But constituted as mankind are, and injured as the repudiated wife ge- 
nerally must be, it is necessary to aJd a stability to the condition oi 



DIVORCE. 131 

married womeiij more secure than the continuance of their husband's 
atfections ; and to supply to both sides, by a sense of duty and of obli- 
gation, what satiety has impaired of passion and of personal attach- 
ment. Upon the whole, the power of divorce is evidently and greatly 
to the disadvantage of the woman : and the only question appears to 
be, whether the real and permanent happiness of one half of the species 
should be surrendered to the caprice and voluptuousness of the other ? 

We have considered divorces as depending upon the will of the hus- 
band, because that is the way in which they- have actually obtained in 
many parts of the world : but the same objections apply, in a great de- 
gree, to divorces by mutual consent • especially when we consider the 
indelicate situation and small prospect of happiness, which remains to 
the party who opposed his or her dissent to the liberty and desire of 
the other. 

The law of nature admits of an exception in favor of the injured 
party, in cases ol adultery, of obstinate desertion, of attempts upon life, 
of outrageous cruelty, of incurable madness, and perhaps of personal 
imbecility ; but by no means indulges the same privilege to mere dis- 
like, to opposition of humors and inclinations, to contrariety of taste 
and temper, to complaints of coldness, neglect, severity, peevishness, 
jealousy : not that these reasons are trivial, but because such objections 
may always be alleged, and are impossible by testimony to be ascertain- 
ed ] so that to allow implicit credit to them, and to dissolve marriages, 
whenever either party thought fit to pretend them, would lead in its 
effect to all the licentiousness of arbitrary divorces. 

Milton's story is well known. Upon a quarrel with his wife, he 
paid his addresses to another woman, and set forth a public vindication 
of his conduct, by attempting to prove that coniirmed dislike was as 
just a foundation for dissolving the marriage contract as adultery ; to 
which position, and to all the arguments by w^hich it can be supported, 
the above consideration affords a sufficient answer. And if a married 
pair, in actual and irreconcilable discord, complain that their happiness 
would be better consulted by permitting them to determine a connection 
which is become odious to both, it may be told them, that the same per- 
mission, as a general rule, would produce libertinism, dissension, and 
misery among thousands who are now virtuous, and quiet, and happy, 
in their condition : and it ought to satisfy them to reflect, that when 
their happiness is sacrificed to the operation of an unrelenting rule, it is 
sacrificed to the happiness of the community. 

The Scriptures seem to have drawn the application tighter than the 
law of nature left it. " Whosoever," saith Christ, " shall put away his 
wife, except it be for fornication, and shall marry another, committeth 
adultery ; and whoso marrieth her which is put away, doth commit 
adultery." Matt. xix. 9. The law of Moses, for reasons of local ex- 
pediency, permitted the Jewish husband to put away his wife y but 
whether for every cause, or for what causes, appears to have been con- 
troverted among the inter})reters of those times. Christ, the precepts of 
whose religion were calculated lor more general use and observation, 
'•evokes the permission (as given to the Jews ^' for the hardness of their 



132 - DIVORCE. 

hearts,") and promulges a law which was thenceforward to confine 
divorces to the single case of adultery in the wife. And I see no suffi- 
cient reason to depart from the plain and strict meaning of Christ's 
words. The rule was new. It both surprised and offended his disci- 
ples 3 yet Christ added nothing to relax or explain it. 

Inferior causes may justify the separation of husband and wife, al- 
though they will not authorize such a dissolution of the marriage con- 
tract as would leave either party at liberty to marry again • for it is that 
liberty in which the danger and mischief of divorces principally consist. 
If the care of children does not require that they should live together, 
and it is become^ in the serious judgment of both, necessary for their 
mutual happiness that they should separate, let them separate by con- 
sent. Nevertheless, this necessity can hardly exist, without guilt and 
misconduct on one side or on both. Moreover, cruelty, ill usage, ex- 
treme violence or moroseness of temper, or other great and continued 
provocations, make it lawful for the party aggrieved to withdraw from 
the society of the offender without his or her consent. The law which 
imposes the marriage vow, whereby the parties promise to " keep to 
each other," or in other words, to live together, must be understood to 
impose it with a silent reservation of these cases ) because the same 
law has constituted a judicial relief from the tyranny of the husband, 
by the divorce a mensa et toro^ and by the provision which it makes 
for the separate maintenance of the injured wife. St. Paul likewise 
distinguishes between a v^ife's merely separating herself from the family 
of her husband, and her marrying again : — " Let not the wife depart 
from her husband ; but and if she do depart, let her remain unmarried," 

The law of this country, in conformity to our Saviour's injunction, 
confines the dissolution of the marriage contract to the single case of 
adultery in the wife; and a divorce even in that case can only be 
brought about by the operation of an act oi parliament, founded upon a 
previous sentence in the ecclesiastical court, and a verdict against the 
adulterer at common jaw : which proceedings taken together compose 
as complete an investigation of the complaint as a cause can receive. 
It has lately been proposed to the legislature to annex a clause to these 
acts, restraining the oBfending party from marrying with the companion 
of her crime, who. by the course of proceeding, is always known and 
convicted : for there is reason to fear that adulterous connexions are 
often formed with the prospect of bringing them to this conclusion ] at 
least, when the seducer has once captivated the affection of a married 
woman, he may avai] himself of this tempting argument to subdue her 
scruples, and complete his victory ; and the legislature, as the business 
is managed at present, assists by its interposition the criminal design of 
the offenders, and confers a privilege where it ought to inflict a punish- 
ment. The proposal deserved an experiment : but something more 
penal will, I apprehend, be found necessary to check the progress of this 
alarming depravity. Whether a law might not be framed, directing 
the fortune of the adulteress to descend as in case of her natural death ; 
reserving, however, a certain proportion of the produce of it, by way oi 
jannuity, for her subsistence, (such annuity, in no case, to exceed a fixed 



MARRIAGE. 133 

sum,) and also so far suspending the estate in the hands of the heir as 
to preserve the inheritance to any children she might bear to a second 
marriage, in case there was none to succeed in the place of their mother 
by the hrst ) whether, I say, such a law would not render female virtue 
in higher life less vincible, as well as the seducers of that virtue less 
urgent in their suit, we recommend to the deliberation of those who are 
willing to attempt the reformation of this important, but most incorrigi- 
ble class of the community. A passion for splendor, for expensive 
amusements and distinctions, is commonly found in that description of 
women who would become the objects of such a law, not less inordi- 
nate than their other appetites. A severity of the kind we propose, 
applies immediately to that passion. And there is no room for any 
complaint of injustice, since the provisions above stated, with others 
which might be contrived, confine the punishment, so far as it is possi- 
ble, to the person of the offender : suffering the estate to remain to the 
heir, or within the family of the ancestor from whom it came, or to 
attend the appointments of his will. 

Sentences of the ecclesiastical courts, which release the parties a 
vinculo matrimonii by reason of impuberty, frigidity, consanguinity 
within the prohibited degrees, prior marriage, or want of the requisite 
consent of parents and guardians, are not dissolutions of the marriage 
contract, but judicial declarations that there never was any marriage^ 
such impediment subsisting at the time, as rendered the celebration of 
the marriage rite a mere nullity. And the right itself contains an ex- 
ception of these impediments. The man and woman to be married are 
charged, " if they know any impediment why they may not be lawfully 
joined together, to confess it ;" and assured, " that so many as are 
coupled together, otherwise than God's word doth allow, are not joined 
together by God, neither is their matrimony lawful •" all which is in- 
tended by way of solemn notice to the parties, that the vow they are 
about to make will bind their consciences and authorize their cohabita- 
tion, only upon the supposition that no legal impediment exists. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MARRIAGE. 

Whether it hath grown out of some tradition of the Divine appoint- 
ment of marriage in the persons of our first parents, or merely from a 
design to impress the obligation of the marriage contract with a solem- 
nity suited to its importance, the marriage rite, in almost all countries of 
the world, has been made a religious ceremony •* although marriage, in 

* It was not however, in Christian countries required that marriages should be 
celebrated in churches, till the thirteenth century ol the Christian era. Marriages in 
JS^giand, during the Usurpation, were solemnized before justices of the peace \ but 
for what purpose this novelty was introduced, except to degrade the clergy, does 
not appear. 



1 34 MARRIAGE. 

its own nature, and abstracted from the rules and declarations which 
the Jewish and Christian Scriptures- deliver concerning it, be properly a 
civil contract, and nothing more. 

With respect to one main article in matrimonial alliances, a total al- 
teration has taken place in the fashion of the world : the wife now 
brings money to her husband, whereas anciently the husband paid 
money to the family of the wife ] as was the case among the Jewish 
patriarchs, the Greeks, and the old inhabitants of Germany^ This al- 
teration has proved oi no small advantage to the female sex : for their 
importance in point of fortune procures to them, in modern times, that 
assiduity and respect w^hich were always wanted to compensate for the 
inferiority of their strength, but which their personal attractions would 
not always secure. 

Our business is with marriage as it is established in this country. 
And in treating thereof it will be necessary to state the terms of the 
marriage vow, in order to discover — 

1 . VVhat duties this vow creates. 

2. What situation of the mind, at the time, is inconsistent with it. 

3. By what subsequent behavior it is violated. 

The husband promises, on his part, '' to love, comfort, honor, and 
keep, his wife;" the wife on hers, "to obey, serve, love, honor, and 
keep her husband :" in every variety of health, fortune, and condition . 
and both stipulate '' to forsake all others, and to keep only unto one 
another, so long as they both shall live." This promise is called the 
marriage vow : is witnessed before God and the congregation ; accom- 
panied with prayers to Almighty God for his blessing upon it ) and at- 
tended with such circumstances of devotion and solemnity as place the 
obligation of it, and the guilt of violating it, nearly upon the same foun- 
dation with that of oaths. 

The parties by this vow engage their personal fidelity expressly and 
specifically ; they engage likewise to consult and promote each other's 
happiness: the wife, moreover, promises obedience to her husband. 
Nature may have made and left the sexes of the human species nearly 
equal in their faculties, and perfectly so in their rights; but to guard 
against those competitions which equality, or a contested superiority, is 
almost sure to produce, the Christian Scriptures enjoin upon the wife 
that obedience which she here promises, and in terms so peremptory and 
absolute, that it seems to extend to everything not criminal, or not en- 
tirely inconsistent with the woman's happiness. " Let the wife," says 
St. Paul, "be subject to her own husband in everything." — "The orna- 
ment of a meek and quiet spirit," says the same apostle, speaking of the 
duty of wives, " is, in the sight of God, of great price." No words ever 
expressed the true merit of the female character so well as these. 

The condition of human life will not permit us to say that ifo one 
can conscientiously marry who does not prefer the person at the altar 



* The ancient Assyrians sold their beauties by an annual auction. The prices were 
applied by way of portions to the more homely. By this contrivance all of both sorts 
were disposed of in marriage. 



DUTY OF PARENTS. 135 

to all other men or women in the world ; hut we can have no difficulty 
ill pronouncing, (whether we respect the end of the institution, or the 
plain terms in which the contract is conceived,) that whoever is con- 
scious, at the time of his marriage, of such a dislike to the woman he- 
is about to marry, or of such a subsisting attachment to some other wo- 
man, that he cannot reasonably, nor does in fact, expect ever to entertain 
an affection for his future wife, is guilty, when he pronounces the mar- 
riage vow, of a direct and deliberate prevarication ] and that, too, ag- 
gravated by the presence of those ideas of religion, and of the Supreme 
Being, which the place, the ritual, aad the solemnity of the occasion 
cannot fail of bringing to his thoughts. The same likewise of the wo- 
man. This charge must be imputed lo ail who, from mercenary motives, 
marry the objects of their aversion and disgust ; and likewise to those 
who desert, from any motive whatever, the object of their aifection, and, 
without being able to subdue that affection, marry another. 

The crime of falsehood is also incurred by the man who intends, at 
the time of his marriage, to commence, renew, or continue a personal 
commerce with any other woman. And the parity of reason, if a wife 
be capable of so much guilt, extends to her. 

The marriage vow is violated, 

1 . By adultery. 

2. By any behavior which knowingly renders the life of the other 
miserable ; as desertion, neglect, prodigality, drunkenness, peevishness, 
penuriousness, jealousy, or any levity of conduct which administers oc- 
casion of jealousy. 

A late regulation in the law of marriages, in this country, has made 
the consent of the father, if he be living, of the mother, if she survive 
the father, and remain unmarried, or of guardians, if both parents be 
dead, necessary to the marriage of a person under twenty-one years of 
age. By the Roman law, the consent et avi et patris was required so 
long as they lived. In France, the consent of parents is necessary to 
the marriage of sons, until they attain to thirty years of age • of daugh- 
ters until twenty-five. In Holland, for sons till twenty -live : for daugh- 
ters till twenty. And this distinction between the sexes appears to be 
well founded • for a woman is usually as properly qualified for the 
domestic and inferior duties of a wife or mother at eighteen, as a man 
is for the business of the world, and the more arduous care of providing 
for a family, at twenty-one. 

The constitution, also, of the human species indicates the same dis- 
tinction."* 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF THE DUTY OF PARENTS. 

That virtue which confines its beneficence within the walls of a 

*CuTn vis prolem procreandi diutius hosreat in mare quam in foemina, populi nume- 
I'us nequaquam minuetur. si serins venerem colere inceperint viri. 



136 DUTY OF PARENTS. 

man's own house, we have been accustomed to consider as little better 
than a more refined selfishness ; and yet it will be confessed, that the 
subject and matter of this class of duties are inferior to none in utility 
and importance : and where, it may be asked, is virtue the most valuable, 
but where it does the most good ?- What duty is the most obligatory, 
but that on which the most depends 1 And where have we happiness 
and misery so much in our power, or liable to be so effected by our con- 
duct, as in our own families ? It will also be acknowledged, that the 
good order and happiness of the world are better upholden while each 
man applies himself to his own concerns, and the care of his own fami- 
ly, to which he is present, than if every man/from an excess of mistaken 
generosity, should leave his own business to undertake his neighbor's, 
which he must always manage with less knowledge, conveniency, and 
success. If, therefore, the low estimation of these virtues be well found- 
ed, it must be owing, not to their inferior importance, but to some defect 
or impurity in the motive. And indeed it cannot be denied, that it is in 
the power of association so to unite our children's interest with our own, 
as that we shall often pursue both from the same motive, place both in 
the same object, and with as little sense of duty in one pursuit as in the 
other. Where this is the case, the judgment above stated is not far 
from the truth. And so often as we find a solicitous care of a man's 
own family, in a total absence or extreme penury of every other virtue, 
or interfering with other duties, or directing its operation solely to the 
temporal happiness of the children, placing that happiness in am.usement 
and indulgence while they are young, or in advancement of fortune 
when they grow up, there is reason to believe that this is the case. In 
this way, the common opinion concerning these duties maybe account- 
ed for and defended. If we look to the subject of them, we perceive 
them to be indispensable : If we regard the motive, we find them often 
not very meritorious. Wherefore, although a man seldom rises high in 
our esteem who has nothing to recommend him besides the care of his 
own family, yet we always condemn the neglect of this duty with the 
utmost severity ; both by reason of the manifest and immediate mischief 
which we see arising from this neglect, and because it argues a want 
not only of parental affection, but of those moral principles which ought 
to come in aid of that affection where it is wanting. And if, on the 
other hand, our praise and esteem of these duties be not proportioned to 
the good they produce, or to the indignation with which w^e resent the 
absence of them, it is for this reason that virtue is the most valuable, 
not where it produces the most good, but where it is the most wanted ; 
which is not the case here ; because its place is often supplied by in- 
stincts, or involuntary associations. Nevertheless, the offices of a pa- 
rent may be discharged from a consciousness of their obligation, as well 
as other duties; and a sense of this obligation is sometimes necessary 
to assist the stimulus of parental affection ; especially in stations of life 
in which the wants of a family cannot be supplied without the con- 
cinual hard labor of the father, and without his refraining from many 
indulgences and recreations which unmarried men of like condition are 
ablp to purchase. Where the parental affection is sufficiently strong, 



DUTY OF PARENTS. 137 

or has fewer difficulties to surmount, a principle of duty may still be 
wanted to direct and regulate its exertions ; for otherwise it is apt to 
spend and waste itself in a womanish fondness for the person of the 
child ] an improvident attention to his present ease and gratification • a 
pernicious facility and compliance with his humors ] an excessive and 
superfluous care to provide the externals of happiness, with little or no 
attention to the internal sources of virtue and satisfaction. Universally, 
wherever a parent's conduct is prompted or directed by a sense of duty, 
there is so much virtue. 

Having premised thus much concerning the place which parental du- 
ties hold in the scale of human virtues, we proceed to state and explain 
the duties themselves. 

When moralists tell us that parents are bound to do all they can for 
their children, they tell us more than is true : for, at that rate, every 
expense which might have been spared, and every profit omitted which 
might have been made, would be criminal. 

The duly of parents has its limits, like other duties ) and admits, if 
not of perfect precision, at least of rules definite enough for application. 

These rules may be explained under the several heads of mainte- 
nance^ education^ and a reasonable provision for the child's happiness in 
respect of outward condition . 

1. Maijitenance. 

The wants of children make it necessary that some person maintain 
them ; and, as no one has a right lo burden others by his act, it follows 
that ihe parents are bound to undertake this charge themselves. Be- 
sides this plain inference, the affection of parents to their children, if it 
be instinctive, and the provision which nature has prepared in the per- 
son of the mother for the sustentation of the infant, concerning flie ex- 
istence and design of which there can be no doubt, are manifest indica- 
tions of the Divme will. 

Hence we learr. the guilt of those who run away from their families, 
or (what is much the same,) in consequence of idleness or drunkenness, 
throw them upon a parish : or who leave them destitute at their death, 
when, by diligence and frugality, they might have laid up a provision 
for their support ; also of those who refuse or neglect the care of their 
bastard offspring, abandoning them to a condition in which they must 
either perish or become burdensome to others : for the duty of main- 
tenance, like the reason upon which it is founded, extends to bastards 
as well as to legitimate children. 

The Christian Scriptures, although they concern themselves little 
with maxims of prudence or economy, and much less authoiize worldli- 
mindedness or avarice, have yet declared in explicit terms their judg- 
ment of the obligation of this duty : "If any provide not for his own, 
especially for those of his own household, he hath denied the faith, and 
is worse than an infidel," (1 Tim. v. 8 ;) he hath disgraced the Chris- 
tian profession, and fallen short in a duty which even infidels acknow- 
ledge. 

2. Education. 

Education, in the most extensive sense of the word, may comprehend 



138 DUTY OF PARENTS. 

every preparation that is made in our youth for the sequel of our lives ; 
and in this sense I use it. 

Some such preparation is necessary for children of all conditions, 
because without it they must be miserable, and probably will be vicious, 
when they grow up either from want of the means of subsistence, or 
from want of rational and inoffensive occupation. In civilized life 
everything is effected by art and skill. Whence a person who is pro- 
vided with neither (and neither can be acquired w^ithout exercise and 
instruction) will be useless ; and he that is useless will generally be at 
the same time mischievous to the community. So that to send an un- 
educated child into the v/orld is injurious to the rest of mankind ] it is 
little better than to turn out a mad dog or a wild beast into the streets. 

In the inferior classes of the community, this principle condemns the 
neglect of parents, who do not inure their children betimes to labor and 
restraint, by providing them with apprenticeships, services, or other re- 
gular employment, but who suffer them to waste their youth in idleness 
and vagrancy, or to betake themselves to some lazy, trifling, and preca- 
rious calling : for the consequence of having thus tasted the sw^eets of 
natural liberty, at an age when their passions and relish for it are at the 
highest, is that they become incapable, for the remainder of their lives, 
of continued industry, or of persevering attention to anything : spend 
their time in a miserable struggle between the importunity of want and 
the irksomeness of regular application ] and are prepared to embrace 
every expedient which presents a hope of supplying their necessities, 
without confining them to the plough, the loom., the shop, or the count- 
ing-house. 

In the middle orders of society those parents are most reprehensible, 
who neither qualify their children for a profession, nor enable them to 
live without one ;* and those in the highest, who, from indolence, indul- 
gence, or avarice, omit to procure their children those liberal attainments 
which are necessary to make them useful in the stations to which they 
are destined. A man of fortune, who permits his son to consume the 
season of education in hunting, shooting, or in frequenting horse races, 
assemblies, or other unedifying, if not vicious diversions, defrauds the 
community of a benefactor, and bequeaths them a nuisance. 

Some, though not the same preparation for the sequel of their lives, 
is necessary for youth of every description * and therefore for bastards, 
as w^ell as for children of better expectations. Consequently, they who 
leave the education of their bastards to chance, contenting themselves 
with making provision for their subsistence, desert half their duty. 

3. A reasonable provision for the happiness of a child, iri respect of 
outward condition, requires three things : a situation suited to his habits 
and reasonable expectation ; a competent provision for the exigencies 
of that situation ; and a probable security for his virtue. 

The first two articles will vary with the condition of the parent. A 

'^ Among the Athenians, if the parent did not put his child into a way of getting a 
livelihood, the child was not bound to make provision for the parent when old and 
necessitous. 



DUTY OF PARENTS. 139 

cituatioii somewhat approaching in rank and condition to the parent's 
own • or, where that is not practicable, similar to what other parents of 
hke condition provide for their children ; bounds the reasonable, as well 
as (generally speaking) the actual expectations of the child, and there- 
fore contains the extent of the parent's obligation. 

Hence, a peasant satisfies his duty who sends out his children, pro- 
perly instructed for their occupation, to husbandry or to any branch ot 
manufacture. Clergymen, lawyers, physicians, officers in the army or 
navy, gentlemen possessing moderate fortunes of inheritance, or exer- 
cising trade in a large or liberal way, are required by the same rule to 
provide their sons with learned professions, commissions in the army or 
navy, places in public offices, or reputable branches of merchandise. 
Providing a child with a situation includes a competent supply for the 
expenses of that situation, until the profits of it enable the child to sup- 
port himself. Noblemen and gentlemen of high rank and fortune may 
be bound to transmit an inheritance to the representatives of their fami- 
ly, sufficient for their support without the aid of a trade or profession, 
to which there is little hope that a youth, who has been flattered with 
other expectations, w^ll apply himself with diligence or success. In 
these" parts of the world, public opinion has assorted the members of the 
community into four or five general classes, each class comprising a 
great variety of employments and professions, the choice of which must 
be committed to the private discretion of the parent.* All that can be 
expected from parents as a duty, and therefore the only rule which a 
moralist can deliver upon the subject is, that they endeavor to preserve 
their children in the class in which tb > are born, that is to say, in 
which others of similar expectations are accustomed to be placed: and 
that they be careful ta confine their hopes and habits of indulgence to 
objects which will continue to be attainable. 

It is an ill judged thrift, in some rich pa.rents, to bring up their sons 
to mean employments, for the sake of saving the charge of a more ex- 



* The health and virtue of a child's future life are considerations so superior to all 
others, that whatever is likely to Ir-ve the smallest influence upon these deserves ihe 
parent's attention. In respect t.> health, agriculture, and all the active, rural, :in/} oui: 
of door em])loyrnents are to be prt-ferred to manufactures and sedentary occupations. 
In respect of virtue, a course of dialings in which the advantage is mutual, in which 
the profit on one side is connected with the benefit of the other_, (which is the case in 
trade, and all serviceable art or labor,) is more favorable to the nioral character than 
callings in which one man's gain is another man's loss : in which what you acquire 
is acqi.iired without equivalent, and parted with in distress ; as in gaming, and what- 
ever partakes of gaming, and in the predatory profits of war. The following disi no- 
tions also deserve notice . — A business, like a retail trade, in which the profir.s are 
small and frequent, and accruing from the employment, furnishes a moderate and con- 
stant engagement to the mind, and, so far, suits better with the general disposition of 
mankind than professions which are supported by fixed salaries, as stations in the 
church, army, navy, revenue, public offices, &.C., o'r wherein the profits are made in 
large sums, by a few great concerns, or fortunate adventures; as in many branches 
of wholesale and foreign merchandise, in which the occupation is neither so constant. 
Eor the activity so kept alive by immediate encouragement For security, manual 
arts exceed merchandise, and such as supply the wants of mankind are better than 
those which minister to their pleasure. Situations which promise an early settlement 
in marriage are on many accounts to be chosen before tliose which require longer 
waiting for a larger establishment. 



140 DUTY 01 PARENTS. 

pensive education : for these sons, when they become masters of their 
liberty and fortune, will hardly continue in occupations by which they 
think themselves degraded, and are seldom qualified for anything better. 

An attention, in the first place, to the exigencies of the children's re- 
spective conditions in the world ] and a regard, in the second place, to 
their reasonable expectations, always postponing the expectations to the 
exigencies, when both cannot bc satisfied : ought to guide parents in 
the disposal of their fortunes after their death. And these exigencies 
and expectations must be measured by the standard which custom has 
established : for there is a certain appearance, attendance, establish- 
ment, and mode of living, which custom has annexed to the several 
ranks and orders of civil life (and which compose what is called decen- 
cy.) together with a certain society, and particular pleasures, belonging 
to each class : and a young person who is withheld from sharing in 
these for want of fortune, can scarcely be said to have a fair chance for 
happiness : the indignity and mortification ol such a seclusion being 
what few tempers can bear, or bear with contentment. And as to the 
second consideration of what a child may reasonably expect from his 
parent, he will expect what he sees all or most others in similar circum- 
stances receive ] and we can hardly call expectations unreasonable, 
which it is impossible to suppress. 

By virtue of this rule, a parent is justified in making a difference be- 
tween his children, according as they stand in greater or less need of 
the assistance of his fortune, in consequence of the difference of their 
age or sex, or of the situations in which th^y are placed, or the various 
success which they have met w'th. 

On account of the few lucrative employments which are left to the 
female sex, and by consequence the little opportunity they have of adding 
to their income, daughters ought to be the particular objects of a parent's 
care and foresight : and as an option of marriage, from which they can 
reasonably expect happiness, i? not presented to every woman who de- 
serves it, especially in times in which a licentious celibacy is in fashion 
with the men, a father should endeavor to enable his daughters to lead 
a single life with independence and decorum, even though he substract 
more for that purpose from the portions of his sons than is agreeable to 
modern usage, or than they expect. 

But when the exigencies of their several situations are provided for, 
and not before, a parent ought to admit the second consideration, the 
satisfaction of his children's expectations: and upon that principle, to 
prefer the eldest son to the rest, and sons to daughters; which consti- 
tutes the right, and the whole right, of primogeniture, as well as the only 
reason for the preference of one sex to the other. The preference, in- 
deed, of the first-born has one public good effect, that if the estate were 
divided equally among the sons, it would probably make them all idle, 
whereas, by the present rule of descent, it makes only one so ; which 
is the less evil of the two. And it must farther be observed on the part 
of the sons, that if the rest of the community make it a rule to prefer 
sons to daughters, an individual cf that community ought to guide him- 
self by the same rule, upon principles of mere equahty. For, as the son 



DUTY OF PARENTS. 141 

suffers by the rule, in the fortune he may expect in marriage, it is but 
reasonable that he should receive the advantage of it in his own inhe- 
ritance. Indeed, vrhatever the rule be, as to the preference of one sex 
to the other, marriage restores the equality. And as money is generally 
more convertible to profit, and more likely to promote industry, in the 
hands of men than of women, the custom of this country may properly 
be complied with when it does not interfere with the weightier reason 
explained in the last paragraph. 

The point of the children's actual expectations, together with the ex- 
pediency of subjecting the illicit commerce of the sexes to every dis- 
couragement which it can receive, makes the difference between the 
claims of legitimate children and of bastards. But neither reason will 
in any case justify the leaving of bastards to the world without provi- 
sion, education, or profession; or, what is more cruel, without the 
means ot continuing in the situation to which the parent has introduced 
them ; which last is, to leave them to inevitable misery. 

After the first requisite, namely, a provision for the exigencies of his 
situation, is satisfied, a parent may diminish a child's portion, in order 
to punish any flagrant crime, or to punish contumacy and want of filial 
duty in instances not otherwise criminal : for a child who is conscious 
of bad behavior, or of contempt of his parent's will and happiness, can- 
not reasonably expect the same instances of his munificence. 

A child's vices may be of that sort, and his vicious habits so incor- 
rigible, as to afford much the same reason for believing that he will 
waste or misemploy the fortune put into his power as if he were mad 
or idiotish : in which case a parent may treat him as a madman or an 
idiot ; that is, may deem it sufficient to provide for his support, by an 
annuity equal to his wants and innocent enjoyments, and which he 
may be restrained from alienating. This seems to be the only case in 
which a disinherison, nearly absolute, is justifiable. 

Let not a father hope to excuse an inofficious disposition of his for- 
tune, by alleging that " every man may do what he will with his own." 
All the truth which this expression contains is, that his discretion is 
under no control of law ; and that his will, however capricious, will be 
valid. This by no means absolves his conscience from the obliga- 
tions of a parent, or imports that he may neglect, without injustice, the 
several wants and expectations of his family, in order to gratify a 
whim or pique, or indulge a preference founded in no reasonable 
distinction of merit or situation. Although in his intercourse with 
his family, and in the lesser endearments of domestic life, a parent may 
not always resist his partiality to a favorite child, (which, however, 
should be both avoided and concealed, as oftentimes productive of last- 
ing jealousies and discontents ;) yet, when he sits down to make his 
will, these tendernesses must give place to more manly deliberations. 

A father of a family is bound to adjust his economy with a view to 
these demands upon his fortune : and until a sufficiency for these ends 
is acquire.!, or in due time probably will be acquired, (for, in human- 
affairs, probability ought to content us,) frugality and exertions of in- 
dustry are duties, lie is also justified in the declining expensive iibe- 



142 DUTY OF PARENTS. 

rality 3 for, to take from those who want, in order to give to those who 
want, adds nothing to the siock of public happiness. Thus far, there- 
fore, and no farther, the plea of " children^" of " large families," " cha- 
rity begins at home," &c., is an excuse for parsimony, and an answer 
to those who solicit our bounty. Beyond this point, as the use of riches 
becomes less, the desire of laying up should abate proportionably. The 
truth is, our children gain not so much as we imagine, in the chance of 
this world's happiness, or even of its external prosperity, by setting out 
in it with large capitals. Of those who have died rich, a great part 
began with little. And, in respect of enjoyment, there is no compari- 
son between a fortune w'hich a man acquires by well applied industry, 
or by a series of successes in his business, and one found in his posses- 
sion, or received from another. 

A principal part of a parent's duty is still behind, viz.^ the using of 
proper precautions and expedients, ni order to form and preserv^e his 
children's virtue. 

To us, who believe that, in one stage or other of our existence, virtue 
wnll conduct to happiness, and vice terminate in misery ] and who ob- 
serve withal, that men's virtues and vices are to a certain degree pro- 
duced or affected by the management of their youth, and the situations 
in which they are placed ] to all w^ho attend to these reasons, the obli- 
gation to consult a child's virtue will appear to differ in nothing from 
that by which the parent is bound to provide for his maintenance or 
fortune. The child's interest is concerned in the one means of happi- 
ness as well as in the other* and both means are equally, and almost 
exclusively, in the parent's power. 

For this purpose, the first point to be endeavored after, is to impress 
upon children the idea of account aUeness^ that is, to accustom them to 
look forward to the consequences of their actions in another world ] 
which can only be brought about by the parents visibly acting with a 
view to these consequences themselves. Parents, to do them justice, 
are seldom sparing of lessons of virtue and religion j in admonitions 
which cost little, and which profit less ] w^hile their example exhibits a 
continual contradiction of what they teach. A father, for instance, 
will, with much solemnity and apparent earnestness, warn his son 
against idleness, excess in drinking, debauchery, and extravagance, w^ho 
himself loiters about all day without employment ; comes home every 
night drunk ] is made infamous in his neighborhood by some profligate 
connexion ] and wastes the fortune which should support, or remain a 
provision for his family, in riot, or luxury, or ostentation. Or he w^ill 
discourse gravely before his children of the obligation and importance 
of revealed religion, w^hile they see the most frivolous and oftentimes 
feigned excuses detain him from its reasonable and solemn ordinances. 

Or he will set before them, perhaps, the supreme and tremendous au- 
thority of Almighty God 3 that such a Being ought not to be named, or 
even thought upon, without sentiments of profound awe and veneration. 
This may be the lecture he delivers to his family one hour : when the 
next, if an occasion arise to excite his anger, his mirth, or his surprise, 
they will hear him treat the name of the Deity with the most irreverent 



DUTY OF PARENTS. 142 

profanation, and sport with the terms and denunciations of the Christian 
religion, as if they were the language of some ridiculous and long ex- 
ploded superstition. Now even a child is not to be imposed upon by 
such mockery. He sees through the grimace of this counterfeited con- 
cern for virtue. He discovers that his parent is acting a part ] and re- 
ceives his admonitions as he would hear the same maxims from the 
mouth of a player. And when once this opinion has taken possession 
of the child's mind, it has a fatal effect upon the parent's influence in all 
subjects ; even those in which he himself may be sincere and convinced. 
Whereas a silent, but observable regard to the duties of religion in the 
parent's own behavior, will take a sure and gradual hold of the child's 
disposition, much beyond formal reproofs and chidings, which, being 
generally prompted by some present provocation, discover more of an- 
ger than of principle, and are always received with a temporary aliena- 
tion and disgust. 

A good parent's first care is to be virtuous himself; his second to 
make his virtues as easy and engaging to those about him as their na- 
ture will admit. Virtue itself offends, when coupled with forbidding 
manners. And some virtues may be urged to such excess, or brought 
forward so unseasonably, as to discourage, and repel those who observe, 
and who are acted upon by them, instead of exciting an inclination to 
imitate and adopt them. Young minds are particularly liable to these 
unfortunate impressions. For instance, if a fathers economy degene- 
rate into a minute and teasing parsimony, it is odds but that the son, 
who has suffered under it, sets out a sworn enemy to all rules of order 
and frugality. If a father's piety be morose, rigorous, and tinged with 
melancholy, perpetually breaking in upon the recreations of his family, 
and surfeiting them with the language of religion on all occasions, there 
is danger lest the son carry from home with him a settled prejudice 
against seriousness and religion, as inconsistent with every plan of a 
pleasurable life : and turn out, when he mixes with the world, a charac- 
ter of levity and dissoluteness. 

Something likewise may be done tow^ards the correcting or improving 
of those early inclinations which children discover, by disposing them 
into situations the least dangerous to their particular characters. Thus, 
I would make choice of a retired life for young persons addicted to li- 
centious pleasures ] of private stations for the proud and passionate : 
of liberal professions and a town-life for the mercenary and sottish, 
and not, according to the general practice of parents, send dissolute 
youliis into the army ] penurious tempers to trade ; or make a crafty 
lad an attorney; or flatter a vain and haughty temper with elevated 
names or situations, or callings, to which the fashion of the world has 
annexed precedency and distinction, but in which his disposition, with- 
out at all promoting his success, will serve both to multiply and exas- 
perate his disappointments. In the same way, that is, with a view to 
the particular frame and tendency of the pupil's character, I would 
make choice of a public or private education. The reserved, timid, and 
indolent will have their faculties called forth, and their nerves invigora- 
ted by a public education. Youths of strong spirits and passions wiU 



144 RIGHTS OF PARENTS. 

be safer in a private education. At our public schools, as far as I have 
observed, more literature is acquired, and more vice ; quick parts are 
cultivated, slow ones are neglected. Under a private tuition, a mode- 
rate proficiency in juvenile learning is seldom exceeded, but vrith more 
t'.ertainty attained. 



CHAPTER X. 

RIGHTS OF PARENTS. 

The rights of parents result from their duties. If it be the duty ol a 
parent to educate his children, to form them for a life of usefulness and 
virtue, to provide for them situations needful for their subsistence and 
suited to their circumstances, and to prepare them for those situations ; 
he has a right to such authority, and in support of that authority to ex- 
ercise such discipline as may be necessary for these purposes. The law 
of nature acknowledges no other foundation of a parent's right over his 
children besides his duty toward them. (I speak now of such rights as 
may be enforced by coercion.) This relation confers no property in 
their persons, or natural dominion over them, as is commonly supposed. 

Since it is, in general, necessary to determine the destination of chil- 
dren, before they are capable of judging of their own happiness, pa- 
rents have a right to select professions for them. 

As the mother herself owes obedience to the father, her authority 
must submit to his. In a competition, therefore, of commands, the fa- 
ther is to be obeyed. In case of the death of either, the authority, as 
well as duty, of both parents, devolves upon the survivor. 

These rights, always following the duty, belong likewise to guar- 
dians ; and so much of them as is delegated by the parents or guar- 
dians belongs to tutors, schoolmasters, &c. 

From this principle, " that the rights of parents result from their 
duty," it follows that parents have no natural right over the lives of 
their children, as was absurdly allowed to Roman fathers ; nor any to 
exercise unprofitable severities ; nor to command the commission of 
crimes : for these rights can never be wanted for the purpose of a pa- 
r-hint's duty. 

Nor, for the same reason, have parents any right to sell their chil- 
dren into slavery. Upon which, by the way, we may observe^ that 
the children of slaves are not, by the law of nature, born slaves : for, 
as the master's right is derived to him through the parent, it can never 
be greater than the parent's own. 

Hence, also, it appears that parents not only pervert, but exceed their 
just authority, when they consult their own ambition, interest, or pre- 
judice, at the manifest expense of their children's happiness. Of which 
abuse of parental power, the following are instances. The shutting up 
of daughters and younger sons in nunneries and monasteries, in order 
to preserve entire the estate and dignity of the family : or tliC using of 



DLTY OF CHILDREN. 145 

any arts, either of kindness or unkindness, to induce them to make 
choice of this way of life themselves ) or, in countries where the clergy 
are prohibited from marriage, putting sons into the church for the same 
end, who are never likely either to do or receive any good in it suffi- 
cient to compensate for this sacrifice ] the urging of children to mar- 
riages from which they are averse, with the view of exalting or en- 
riching the family, or for the sake of connecting estates, parties, or in- 
terests ; or the opposing of a marriage, in which the child would 
probably find his happiness, from a motive of pride, or avarice, or 
family hostility, or personal pique. 



CHAPTER XI. 

DUTY OF CHILDREN. 

The Duty of Children may be considered, 

1. During childhood. 

2. After they have attained to manhood, but continue in their fathers 
family. 

3. After they have attained to manhood, and have left their father's 
family. 

1. During Childhood. 

Children must be supposed to have attained to some degree of discre- 
tion before they are capable of any duty. There is an interval of eight 
or nine years between the dawning and the maturity of reason, in 
which it is necessary to subject the inclination of children to many re- 
straints, and direct their application to many employments, of the ten- 
dency and use of which they cannot judge ; for which cause, the sub- 
mission of children during this period must be ready and implicit, with 
an exception, however, of any manifest crime which may be command- 
ed them. 

2. After they have attained to manhood^ but continue in their faihefs 
family. 

If children, when they are grown up, voluntarily continue members 
of their fathers family, they are bound, besides the general duty of gra- 
titude to their parents, to observe such regulations of the family as the 
father shall appoint ; contribute their labor to its support, if required ; 
and confine themselves to such expenses as he shall allow. The obli- 
gation would be the same, if they were admitted into any other family, 
or received support from any other hand. 

3. After they have attained to manhood^ and have left their fathefs 
family. 

In this state of the relation, the duty to parents is simply the duty of 
gratitude ; not different in kind^ from that which we owe to any other 
benefactor * in degree^ just so much exceeding other obligations, by how 
much a parent has been a greater benefactor than any other friend. 
The services and attentions, by which filial s^ratitude mav be testified. 

G ^ 



146 DUTY OF CHILDREN. 

can be comprised within no enumeration. It will show itself a 
compliances with the will of the parents, however contrary to the ch d'a 
own taste or judgment, provided it be neither criminal, nor totally in con- 
sistent with his happiness : in a constant endeavor to promote their 
enjoyments, prevent their wishes, and soften their anxieties, in small 
matters as well as in great ; in assisting them in their business ; in con- 
tributing to their support, ease, or better accommodation, when their 
circumstances require it ; in affording them our company, in preference 
to more amusing engagements • in waiting upon their sickness or de- 
crepitude ; in bearing with the infirmities of their health or temper, with 
the peevishness and complaints, the unfashionable, negligent, austere 
manners, and offensive habits, which often attend upon advanced years : 
for where must old age find indulgence, if it do not meet with it in the 
piety and partiality of children '? 

The most serious contentions between parents and their children are 
those commonly which relate to marriage, or to the choice of a profes- 
sion. 

A parent has in no case a right to destroy his child's happiness. If 
it be true, therefore, that there exist such personal and exclusive attach- 
ments between individuals of different sexes, that the possession of a 
particular man or woman in marriage be really necessary for the child's 
happiness; or if it be true that an aversion to a particular profession 
may be involuntary and unconquerable ] then it will follow that pa- 
rents, where this is the case, oug^it not to urge their authority, and that 
the child is not bound to obey it. 

The poini is, to discover how far, in any particular instance, this is 
the case. Whether the fondness of lovers ever continues with such 
intensity, and so long, that the success of their desires constitutes, or the 
disappointment affects, any considerable portion of their happiness, com- 
pared with that of their whole life, it is difficult to detennine ', but there 
can be no difficulty in pronouncing that not one half of those attach- 
ments, which young people conceive with so much haste and passion, 
are of this sort. I believe it also to be true, that there are few aversions 
to a profession, which resolution, perseverance, activity in going about 
the duty of it, and, above all, despair of changing, will not subdue; yet 
there are some such. Wherefore, a child who respects his parents' 
judgment, and is, as he ought to be, tender of their happiness, owes, at 
least, so much deference to their will, as to try fairly and faithfully, in 
one case, whether time and absence will not cool an affection which 
they disapprove ; and in the other, whether a longer continuance in the 
profession which they have chosen for him may not reconcile him to it. 
The whole depends upon the experiment being made on the child's part 
with sincerity, and not merely with a design of compassing his purpose 
at last by means of a simulated and temporary compliance. It is the 
nature of love and hatred, and of al] violent affections, to delude the 
mind with a persuasion that we shall always continue to feel them as 
we feel them at present; we cannot conceive that they will either 
change or cease. Experience of similar or greater changes in ourselves, 
or a habit of giving credit to what our parents, or tutors, or books teach 



DUTy OF CHILDREN. 147 

US, may control this persuasion, otherwise it renders youth very un- 
tractable : for they see clearly and truly that it is impossible they 
should be happy under the circumstances proposed to them, in their 
present state of mind. After a sincere but ineffectual endeavor, by the 
child, to accommodate his inclination to his parent's pleasure, he ought 
not to suffer in his parent's affection, or in his fortunes. The parent, 
when he has reasonable proof of this, should acquiesce : at all events, 
the child is then at liberty to provide for his own happiness. 

Parents have no right to urge their children upon marriages to which 
they are averse; nor ought, in any shape, to resent the children's diso- 
bedience to such commands. This is a different case from opposing a 
match of inclination, because the child's misery is a much more proba- 
ble consequence ; it being easier to live without a person that we love, 
than with one whom we hate. Add to this, that compulsion in mar- 
riage necessarily leads to prevarication ] as the reluctant party promi- 
ses an affection, which neither exists, nor is expected to take place ] 
and parental, like all human authority, ceases at the point where 
obedience becomes criminal. 

In the above-mentioned, and in all contests between parents and 
children, it is the parent's duty to represent to the child the consequen- 
ces of his conduct ] and it will be found his best policy to represent 
them with fidelity. It is usual for parents to exaggerate these descrip- 
tions beyond probability, and by exaggeration to lose all credit with 
their children ; thus in a great measure defeating their own end. 

Parents are forbidden to interfere, where a trust is reposed personal- 
ly in the son ; and where, consequently, the son was expected, and by 
virtue of that expectation is obliged to pursue his own judgment, and 
not that of any other ] as is the case with judicial magistrates in the 
execution of their office ; with members of the legislature in their votes; 
with electors, where preference is to be given to certain prescribed qua- 
lifications. The son may assist his own judgment by the advice of his 
father, or of any one whom he chooses to consult ; but his own judg- 
ment, whether it proceed upon knowledge or authority, ought finally 
to determine his conduct. 

The duty of children to then- parents was thought worthy to be made 
the subject of one of the Ten Commandments ; and, as such, is recog- 
nized by Christ, together w^ith the rest of the morel precepts of the Deca- 
logue, in various places of the Gospel. 

The same Divine Teacher's sentiments concerning the relief of indi- 
gent parents appear sufficiently from that manly and deserved indigna- 
tion with which he reprehended the wretched casuistry of the Jewish 
expositors, who, under the name of a tradition, had contrived a method 
of evading this duty, by converting, or pretending- to convert, to the . 
treasury of the temple so much of their property as their distressed pa- 
rent might be entitled by their law to demand. 

Agreeably to this law of Nature and Christianity, children are, by 
the law of England, bound to support, as well their immediate parents, 
as their grandfather and grandmother, or remoter ancestors, who stand 
in need of support. 



148 DUTY OF CHILDREN. 

Obedience to parents is enjoined by St. Paul to the Ephesians, " Chil- 
dren obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right ;" and to the Colos- 
sians, " Children obey your parents in all things, for this is well pleas- 
ing unto the Lord."* 

By the Jewish law, disobedience to parents \vas in some extreme 
cases capital. Deut. xxi. 18. 

* Upon which two phrases, '• this is right," and, " for this is well pleasing unto the 
Lord," being used by St. Paul in a sense perfectly parallel, we may observe, that 
moral rectitude and conformity to the Divine will were, in his apprehension, the 
same. 



BOOK IV. 



DUTIES TO OURSELVES. 

This division of the subject is retained merely for the sake of method, 
by which the writer and the reader are equally assisted. To the sub- 
ject itself it imports nothing ; for the obligation of all duties being fun- 
damentally the same, it matters little under what class or title any of 
them are considered. In strictness, there are few duties or crimes which 
terminate in a man's self ] and so far as others are affected by their ope- 
ration, they have been treated of in some articles of the preceding book. 
We have reserved, however, to this head the rights of self-defence ; 
also the consideration of drunkenness and suicide, as offences against 
that care of our faculties, and preservation of our persons, which we 
iccount duties, and call duties to ourselves. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE RIGHTS OF SELF-DEFENCE. 

It has been asserted, that in a state of nature we might lawfully de- 
fend the most insignificant right, provided it were a perfect determinate 
right, by any extremities which the obstinacy of the aggressor rendered 
necessary. Of this I doubt ] because I doubt whether the general rule 
be worth sustaining at such an expense ] and because, apart from the 
general consequence of yielding to the attempt, it cannot be contended 
to be for the augmentation of human happiness that one man should 
lose his life, or a limb, rather than another a pennyworth of his pro- 
perty. Nevertheless, perfect rights can only be distinguished by their 
value ] and it is impossible to ascertain the value at which the liberty of 
using extreme violence begins. The person attacked must balance, as 
well as he can, between the general consequence of yielding and the 
particular effect of resistance. 

However, this right, if it exist in a state of nature, is suspended by 
the establishment of civil society * because thereby other remedies are 
provided against attacks upon our property, and because it is necessary 
to the peace and safety of the community, that the prevention, punish- 
ment, and redress of injuries be adjusted by public laws. Moreover, as 
the individual is assisted in the recovery of his right, or of a compen-^ia 



150 RIGHTS OF SELF-DEFENCE. 

tion for his right by the public strength, it is no less equitable than ex 
pedient that he should submit to public arbitration the kind, as well as 
the measure, of the satisfaction, which he is to obtain. 

There is one case in which all extremities are justifiable ; namely, 
when our life is assaulted, and it becomes necessary for our preserva- 
tion to kill the assailant. This is evident in a state of nature ; unless 
it can be shown that we are bound to prefer the aggressor's life to our 
own, that is to say, to love our enemy better than ourselves, which can 
never be a debt of justice, nor anv where appears to be a duty of cha- 
rity. Nor is the case altered by our living in civil society ; because, by 
the supposition, the laws of society cannot interpose to protect us, nor 
by the nature of the case, comper restitution. This liberty is restrained 
to cases in which no other probable means of preserving our life remain; 
as flight, calling for assistance, disarming the adversary, &c. The rule 
holds, whether the danger proceed from a voluntary attack, as by an 
enemy, robber, or assassin ; or from an involuntary one, as by a mad- 
man, or person sinking in the water, and dragging us after him ; or 
where two persons are reduced to a situation in which one or both of 
them must perish ; as in a shipwreck, where two seize upon a plank, 
which will support only one ; although, to say the truth, these extreme 
cases, which happen seldom, and hardly, when they do happen, admit 
of moral agency, are scarcely worth mentioning, much less discussing 
at length. 

The instance which approaches the nearest to the preservation of life, 
and which seems to justify the same extremities, is the defence of 
chastity. 

In all other cases, it appears to me the safest to consider the taking 
away of life as authorized by the law of the land ; and the person who 
takes it away, as in the situation of a minister or executioner of the 
law. 

In which view, homicide, in England, is justifiable, — 

1 . To prevent the commission of a crime, which, when committed, 
would be punishable with death. Thus it is lawful to shoot a high- 
wayman, or one attempting to break into a house by night; but not so 
if the attempt be made in the daytime } which particular distinction, by 
a consent of legislation that is remarkable, obtained also in the Jewish 
law, as well as in the laws both of Greece and Rome. 

2. In necessary endeavors to carry the law into execution: as in 
suppressing riots, apprehending malefactors, preventing escapes, &c. 

I do not know that the lav/ holds forth its authority to any cases be- 
sides those which fall within one or other of the above descriptions ; or 
that, after the exception of immediate danger to life or chastity, the de- 
struction of a human being can be innocent without that authority. 

The rights of war are not here taken into the account. 



DRUNKENNESS. 15) 

CHAPTER 11. 

DEUNKENNESS. 

Drunkenness is either actual or habitual : just as it is one thing to 
be drunk, and anotner to be a drunkard. What we shall deliver upon 
the subject must principally be understood of a habit of intemperance ; 
although part of the guilt and danger described may be applicable to 
casual excess * and all of it, in a certain degree, forasmuch as every 
habit is only a repetition of single instances. 

The mischief of drunkenness, from which we are to compute the 
guilt of it, consists in the following bad effects : — 

1 . It betrays most constitutions either to extravagances of anger or 
sins of lewdness. * 

2. It disqualifies men for the duties of their station, both by the tem- 
porary disorder of their faculties, and at length by a constant incapacity 
and stupefaction. 

3. It is attended with expenses, which can often be ill spared. 

4. It is sure to occasion uneasiness to the family of the drunkard. 

5. It shortens life. 

To these consequences of drunkenness must be added the peculiar 
ianger and mischief of the example. Drunkenness is a social festive 
rice ] apt, beyond any vice that can be mentioned, to draw in others by 
the example. The drinker collects his circle; the circle naturally 
spreads ; of those who are drawn within it, many become the corrupt- 
ers and centres of sets and circles of their own ; every one countenancing, 
and perhaps emulating the rest, till the whole neighborhood be in- 
fected from the contagion of a single example. This account is con- 
firmed by what we often observe of drunkenness, that it is a local vice ; 
found to prevail in certain countries, in certain districts of a country, or 
in particular towns, without any reason to be given for the fashion, but 
that it had been introduced by some popular examples. With this ob- 
servation upon the spreading quality of drunkenness, let us connect a 
remark which belongs to the several evil effects above recited. The 
consequences of a vice, like the symptoms of a disease, though they be 
all enumerated in the description, seldom all meet in the same subject. 
In the instance under consideration, the age and temperature of one 
drunkard may have little to fear from inflammations of lust or anger ; 
the fortune of a second may not be injured by the expense ; a third may 
have no family to be disquieted by his irregularities ; and a fourth may 
possess a constitution fortified against the poison of strong liquors. 
But if. as we always ought to do, we comprehend within the conse- 
quences of our conduct the mischief and tendency of the example, the 
above circumstances, however fortunate for the individual, will be 
found to vary the guilt of his intemperance less, probably, than he sup- 
poses. The moralist may expostulate with him thus : Although the 
waste of time and of money be of small importance to you, it may be of 
the utmost to someone or other whom ur society corrupts. Re- 



1 52 ' DRUNKENNESS. 

peated or long continued excesses, which hurt not your health, may be 
fatal to your companion. Although you have neither wife, nor child, 
nor parent to lament your ahsence from home, or expect your return to 
it with terror ] other families, in which husbands and fathers have been 
invited to share in your ebriety, or encouraged to imitate it, may justly 
lay their misery or ruin at your door. This will hold good whether 
the person seduced be seduced immediately by you, or the vice be pro- 
pagated from you to him through several intermediate examples. 

All these considerations it is necessary to assemble, to judge truly of 
a vice which usually meets with milder names and more indulgence 
than it deserves. 

I omit those outrages upon one another, and upon the peace and safe- 
ty of the neighborhood, in which drunken revels often end ] and also 
those deleterious and maniacal effects which strong liquors produce 
upon particular constitutions ; because, in general propositions concern- 
ing drunkenness, no consequences should be included but what are 
constant enough to be generally expected. 

Drunkenness is repeatedly forbidden by St. Paul : " Be not drunk 
with wine, wherein is excess." " Let us walk honestly as in the day, 
not in rioting and drunkenness." " Be not deceived : neither fornica- 
tors, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the 
kingdom of God." Eph. v. 18 ; Rom. xiii. 13; 1 Cor. vi. 9, 10. The 
same apostle likewise condemns drunkenness as peculiarly inconsis- 
tent with the Christian profession : " they that be drunken are drunken 
'n the night : but let us, who are of the day, be sober." 1 Thess. v. 
7, 8. We are not concerned with the argument; the words amount to 
a prohibition of drunkenness ] and the authority is conclusive. 

It is a question of some importance, how far drunkenness is an ex- 
cuse for the crimes which the drunken person commits. 

In the solution of this question, we will first suppose the drunken 
person to be altogether deprived of moral agency, that is to say, of all 
reflection and foresight. In this condition, it is evident that he is no 
more capable of guill than a madman ; although, like him, he may be 
extremely mischievous. The only guill with which he is chargeable 
was incurred at the time when he voluntarily brought himself into this 
situation. And as every man is responsible for the consequences 
which he foresaw, or might have foreseen, and for no other, this guilt 
will be in proportion to the probability of such consequences ensuing. 
From which principle results the following rule, viz. that the guilt of 
any action in a drunken man bears the same proportion to the guilt of 
the like action in a sober man, that the probability of its being the con- 
sequence of drunkenness bears to absolute certainty. By virtue of 
this rule, those vices which are the known effects of drunkenness, 
either in general, or upon particular constitutions, are in all, or in men 
of such constitutions, nearly as criminal as if committed with all their 
faculties and senses about them. 

If the privation of reason be only partial, the guilt will be of a mixed 
nature. For so much of his self-government as the drunkard retains, 
he is as responsible then as at any other time. He is entitled to no 



DRUNKENNESS. 153 

abatement beyond the strict proportion in which his moral faculties are 
impaired. Now I call the guilt of the crime, if a sober man had com- 
mitted it, the whole guilt. A person in the condition we describe incurs 
part of this at the instant of perpetration, and by bringing himself into that 
condition, he incurred such a fraction of the remaining part, as the 
danger of this consequence was of an integral certainty. For the sake 
of illustration, we are at liberty to suppose that a man loses half his 
moral faculties by drunkenness; this leaving him but half his respon- 
sibility, he incurs, when he commits the action, half of the whole guilt. 
We will also suppose that it was known beforehand, that it was an 
even chance, or half a certainty, that this crime would follow his getting 
drunk. This makes him chargeable with half of the remainder ] so 
that, altogether, he is responsible in three fourths of the guilt which a 
sober man would have incurred in the same action. 

I do not mean that any real case can be reduced to numbers, or the 
calculation be ever made with arithmetical precision ; but these are 
the principles, and this the rule by which our general admeasurement 
of the guilt of such offences should be regulated. 

The appetite for intoxicating liquors appears to me to be almost al- 
ways acqmred. One proof of which is, that it is apt to return only at 
particular times and places ] as after dinner, in the evening, on the 
market day, at the market town, in such a company, at such a tavern. 
And this may be the reason that, if a habit of drunkenness be ever over- 
come, it is upon some change of place, situation, company, or profes- 
sion. A man sunk deep in a habit of drunkenness will, upon such oc- 
casions as these, when he finds himself loosened from the associations 
which held him fast, sometimes make a plunge and get out. In a 
matter of so great importance, it is well worth while, where it is in any 
degree practicable, to change our habitation and society, for the sake of 
the experiment. 

Habits of drunkenness commonly take their rise either from a fond- 
ness for, and connexion with, some company, or some companion, al- 
ready addicted to this practice : which affords an almost irresistable in- 
vitation to take a share in the indulgences which those about us are 
enjoying with so much apparent relish and delight; or from want of re- 
gular employment, which is sure to let in many superfluous cravings 
and customs, and often this among the rest ] or, lastly, from grief or fa- 
tigue, both which strongly solicit that relief which inebriating liquors 
administer, and also furnish a specious excuse for complying with the 
inclination. But the habit, when once set in, is continued by different 
motives from those to which it owes its origin. Persons addicted to 
excessive drinking suffer, in the intervals of sobriety, and near the re- 
turn of their accustomed indulgence, a faintness and oppression circa 
prcecordia, which it exceeds the ordinary patience of human nature to 
endure. This is usually relieved for a short time by a repetition of the 
same excess ; and to this relief, as to the removal of every long con- 
tinued pain, they who have once experienced it, are ur^ed almost be- 
yond the power of resistance. This is not all : as the liquor loses its 
stimulus^ the dose must be increased, to reach the same pitch of eleva- 

G 2 



154 SUICIDE. 

tion or ease ; which increase pioportionably accelerates the progress of 
all the maladies that drunkenness brings on. Whoever reflects upon 
the violence of the craving in the advanced stages of the habit, and the 
fatal termination to which the gratification of it leads, will, the moment 
he perceives in himself the first symptoms of a growing inclination to 
intemperance, collect his resolution to this point ; or (what perhaps he 
will find his best security) arm himself with some peremptory rule, as 
to the times and quantity of his indulgences. I own myself a friend 
to the laying down of rules to ourselves of this sort, and rigidly abiding 
by them. They may be exclaimed against as stifi^, but they are often 
salutary. Indefinite resolutions of abstemiousness are apt to yield to 
extraordinary occasions : and extraordinary occasions to occur perpe- 
tually. Whereas, the stricter the rule is, the more tenacious we grow of 
it : and many a man will abstain rather than break his rule, who would 
not easily be brought to exercise the same mortification from higher 
motives. Not to mention, that when our rule is once known, we are 
provided with an answer to every importunity. 

There is a difference, no doubt, between convivial intemperance and 
that solitary sottish ness which waits neither for company nor invita- 
don. But the one, I am afraid, commonly ends in the other; and this 

ast is the basest degradation to \\hich the faculties and dignity of hu- 

nan nature can be reduced. 



CHAPTER III. 



There is jio subject in morality in which the consideration of gen^ 
eral consequences is more necessary than that of suicide. Particular 
and extreme cases of suicide may be imagined, and may arise, of which 
it would be difficult to assign the particular mischief, or from that con- 
sideration alone to demonstrate the guilt; and theso cases have been 
the chief occasion of confusion and doubtfulness in the question : al- 
beit this is no more than what is sometimes true of the most acknow- 
ledged vices, J could propose many possible cases even of murder, 
which, if they were detached from the general rule, and governed by 
their own particular consequences alone, it would be no easy undertak- 
ing to prove criminal. 

The true question in this argument is no other than this : May 
every man who chooses to destroy his life, innocently do so? Limit 
and distinguish the subject as you can, it will come at last to this 
question. . . 

For shall we say, that we are then at liberty to commit suicide when 
we find our continuance in life become useless to mankind ? Any one 
who pleases may make himself useless ; and melancholy minds are 
prone to think themselves useless, when they really are not so. Sup- 
pose 31 law were promul.i^ated allowing each private person to destroy 



SUICIDE. 155 

every man he met whose longer continuance in the world he judged to 
be useless ; who would not condemn the latitude of such a rule % who 
does not perceive that it amounts to a permission to commit murder at 
pleasure ? A similar rule, regulating the right over our own lives, 
would be capable of the same extension. Besides which no one is 
useless for the purpose of this plea but he who has lost every capacity 
and opportunity of being useful, together with the possibility of recov- 
ering any degree of either ; which is a state of such complete destitu- 
tion and despair, as cannot, I believe, be predicated of any man living. 

Or rather, shall we say, that to depart voluntarily out of life is law- 
ful for those alone who leave none to lament their death ? If this con- 
sideration is to be taken into the account at all, the subject of debate 
will be, not whether there are any to sorrow for us, but whether their 
sorrow for our death will exceed that which we should suffer by con- 
tinuing to live. Now this is a comparison of things so indeterminate 
in their nature, capable of so different a judgment, and concerning 
which the judgment will differ so much according to the state of the 
spirits, or the pressure of any present anxiety, that it would vary little, 
in hypochondriacal constitutions, from an unqualified license to commit 
suicide, whenever the distresses which men felt, or fancied, rose high 
enough to overcome the pain and dread of death. Men are never 
tempted to destroy themselves but when under the oppression of some 
grievous uneasiness * the restrictions of the rule therefore ought to 
apply to these cases. But what effect can we look for from a rule 
which proposes lo weigh our pain against that of another : the misery 
that is felt, against that which is only conceived ] and in so corrupt a 
balance as the party's own distempered imagination. 

In like manner, whatever other rule you assign, it will ultimately 
bring us to an indiscriminate toleration of suicide, in all cases in which 
there is danger of its being committed. It remains, therefore, to inquire 
what would be the effect of such a toleration ? evidently the loss of 
many lives to the community, of which some might be useful or im- 
portant; the affliction of many families, and the consternation of all ; 
for mankind must live in continual alarm for the fate of their friends 
and dearest relations, when the restraints of religion and morality are 
withdrawn ; when every disgust which is powerful enough to tempt 
men to suicide shall be deemed sufficient to justify it ; and when the 
follies and vices, as well as the inevitable calamities of human life, so 
often make existence a burden. 

A second consideration, and perfectly distinct from the former, is this : 
By continuing in the world, and in the exercise of those virtues which 
remain within our power, we retain the opportunity of ameliorating 
our condition in a future state. This argument, it is true, does not in 
strictness prove suicide to be a crime ; but if it supply a motive to dis- 
suade us from committing it, it amounts to much the same thing. Now 
therp is no condition in human life which is not capable of some virtue, 
active or passive. Even piety and resignation under the sufferings to 
which we are called, testify a trust and acquiescence in the Divine 
counsels, more acceptable, perhaps, than the most prostrate devotion ; 



Ib6 SUICIDE. 

afford an edifying example to all who observe them ; and may hope for 
a recompense among the most arduous of human virtues. These 
qualities are always in the power of the miserable ; indeed of none but 
the misemble. 

The two considerations above stated belong to all cases of suicide 
whatever. Besides which general reasons, each case will be aggrava- 
ted by its own proper and particular consequences ; by the duties that 
are deserted ] by the claims that are defrauded ; by the loss, affliction, 
or disgrace, which our death, or the manner of it, causes our family, 
kindred, or friends ; by the occasion we give to many to suspect the 
sincerity of our moral and religious professions, and, together with 
ours, those of all others ; by the reproach we draw upon our order, 
calling, or sect ; in a word, by a great variety of evil consequences at- 
tending upon peculiar situations, with .some or other of which every 
actual case of suicide is- chargeable. 

I refrain from the common topics of *' deserting our post," " throw- 
ing up our trust," " rushing uncalled into the presence of our Maker," 
with some others of the same sort, not because they are common (for 
that rather affords a presumption in their favor,) but because I do not 
perceive in them much argument to which an answer m.ay not easily 
be given. 

Hitherto we have pursued upon the .subject the light of nature alone : 
taking, however, into the account the expectation of a future exist- 
ence, without which our reasoning upon this, as indeed all reasoning 
upon moral questions, is vain : we proceed to inquire, whether any- 
thing is to be met with in Scripture which may add to the probability 
of the conclusions we have been endeavoring to support. And here I 
acknowledge, that there is to be found neither any express determina- 
tion of the question, nor sufficient evidence to prove that the case of 
suicide was in the contemplation of the law which prohibited murder. 
Any inference, therefore, which we deduce from Scripture can be sus- 
tained only by construction and implication : that is to say, although 
they who were authorized to instruct mankind have not decided a 
question which never, so far as appears to us, came before them : yet, 
I think, they have left enough to constitute a presumption how they 
would have decided it, had it been proposed or thought of. 

What occurs to this purpose is contained in the following observa- 
tions : 

1. Human life is spoken of as a term assigned or prescribed to us : 
" Let us run with patience the race that is set before us." — " I have 
finished my course." — " That I may finish my course with joy." — ' Ye 
have need of patience, that, after ye have done the will of God, ye 
might receive the promise." — These expressions appear to me inconsis- 
tent with the opinion that we are at liberty to determine the duration of 
our lives for ourselves. If this were the case, with what propriety 
could life be called a race that is set before us ; or, which is the same 
thing, " our course ;" that is, the course set out, or appointed to us 1 
The remaining quotation is equally strong: — "That, after ye have 
done the will of God, ye might receive the promise." The most natu- 



SUICIDE. 1 57 

ra! meaning that can be given to tho words, " after ye have done the 
will of God," is, after ye have discharged the duties of hfe so long as 
God is pleased to continue you in it. According to which interpreta- 
tion, the text militates strongly against suicide : and they who reject 
this paraphrase will please to propose a better. 

2. There is not one quahty which Christ and his apostles inculcate 
upon their followers so often, or so earnestly, as that of patience under 
affliction. Now this virtue would have been in a great measure su- 
perseded, and the exhortations to it might have been spared, if the dis- 
ciples of his religion had been at liberty to quit the world as soon as 
they grew weary of the ill usage which they received in it. When the 
evils of life pressed sore, they were to look forward to a " far more ex- 
ceeding and eternal weight of glory :" they were to receive them as 
" chastenings of the Lord," as intimations of his car6 and love : by 
these and the like reflections they were to support and improve them- 
selves under their sufferings : but not a hint has any where escaped of 
seeking relief in a voluntary death. The following text, in particular, 
strongly combats all impatience of distress, of which the greatest is that 
which prompts to acts of suicide : — " Consider him that endured such 
contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in 
your minds." I would offer my comment upon this passage in these 
two queries : first, whether a Christian convert, who had been impel- 
led by the continuance and urgeiicy ox hissuifenngs to destroy his own 
hfe, would not have been thought by the author of this text '• to have 
been weary," to have " fainted in his mind," to have fallen off from 
that example which is here proposed to the meditation of Christians in , 
distress ? And yet, secondly, Whether such an act would not have 
been attended with all the circumstances of mitigation which can ex- 
cuse or extenuate suicide at this day ? 

3. The conduct of the apostles, and of the Christians of the apos 
tolic age, affords no obscure indication of their sentiments upon this 
point. They lived, we are sure, in a confirmed persuasion of the ex- 
istence, as well as of the happiness, of a future state. They experi- 
enced in this world every extremity of external injury and distress. To 
die was gain. The change which death brought with it was, in their 
expectation, infinitely beneficial. Yet it never, that we can find, en- 
tered into the intention of one of them to hasten this change by an act 
of suicide ; from which it is difficult to say what motive could have so 
universally withheld them, except an apprehension of some unlawful- 
ness in the expedient. 

Having stated what we have been able to collect in opposition to the 
lawfulness of suicide, by way of direct proof, it seems unnecessary to 
open a separate controversy with all the arguments which are made 
use of to defend it ; which would only lead us into a repetition of what 
has been offered already. The following argument, however, being 
somewhat more artificial and imposing than the rest, as well as distinct 
from the general consideration of the subject, cannot so properly be 
passed over. If we deny to the individual a right over his own life, it 
seems impossible, it is said, to reconcile with the law of nature that 



158 SUICIDE. 

right which the state claims and exercises over the lives of its subjects, 
when it ordains or inflicts capital punishments. For this right, like all 
other just authority in the state, can only he derived from the compact 
and virtual consent of the citizens which compose the state ; and it 
seems self evident, if any principle in morality be so, that no one, by 
his consent, can transfer to another a right which he does not possess 
himself. It will be equally difficult to account for the power of the 
state to commit its subjects to the dangers of war, and to expose their 
lives without scruple in the field of battle ; especially in offensive hos- 
tilities, in which the privileges of self defence cannot be pleaded with 
any appearance of truth ; and still more difficult to explain how. in 
such, or in any circumstances, prodigality of life can be a virtue, if the 
preservation of it be a duty of our nature. 

This whole re'asoning sets out from one error, nam.ely, that the state 
acquires its right over the life of the subject from the subject's own con- 
sent, as a part of "what originally and personally belonged to himself, 
and which he has made over to his governors. The truth is, the state 
derives this right neither from the consent of the subject, nor through 
the medium of that consent ; but, as I may say, immediately from the 
donation of the Deity. Finding that such a power in the sovereign oi 
the community is expedient, if not necessary, for the community itself, 
it is justly presumed to be the will of God that the sovereign should 
possess and exercise it. It is this 'presumption which constitutes the 
right ; it is the same indeed which constitutes every other : and if there 
were the like reasons to authorize the presumption in the case of pri- 
vate persons, suicide would be as justifiable as w^ar or capital execu- 
tions. But until it can be shown that the power over human life may 
be converted to the same advantage in the hands of individuals over 
their own, as in those of the state over the lives of its subjects, and that 
it may be intrusted with equal safety to both, there is no room for ar- 
guing, from the existence of such a right in the latter, to the toleration 
of it in the former. 



BOOK V. 

DUTIES TOWARD GOD. 
CHAPTER I. 

DIVISION OF THESE DUTIES. 

In one sense, every duty is a duty toward God, since it is his will 
which makes it a duty ; but there are some duties of which God is the 
object as well as the author ; and these are peculiarly, and in a more 
appropriate sense, called duties toward God. 

That silent piety, which consists in a habit of tracing out the Crea- 
tors wisdom and goodness in the objects around us, or in the history of 
his dispensations ; of reierrmg the blessings we enjoy to his bounty, 
and of resorting in our distresses to his succor ; may possibly be more 
acceptable to the Deity than any visible expressions of devotion what- 
ever. Yet these latter (which, although they may be excelled, are not 
superseded by the former) compose the only part of the subject which 
admits of direction or disquisition from a moralist. 

Our duty toward God, so far as it is external, is divided into worship 
and reverence. God is the immediate object of both ; and the difference 
between them is, that the one consists in action, the other in forbear- 
ance. When we go to church on the Lord's day. led thither by a sense 
of duty toward God, we perform an act of worship ; when, from the 
same motive, we rest in a journey upon that day, we discharge a duty 
of reverence. 

Divine worship is made up of adoration, thanksgiving, and prayer. 
But, as what we have to offer concerning the two former may be ob- 
served of prayer, we shall make that the title of the following chap- 
ters, aUii the direct subject of our consideration. 



CHAPTER IL 

OF THE DUTY AND OF THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER, SO FAR AS THE 
SAME APPEAR FROM THE LIGHT OF NATURE. 

When one man desires to obtain anything of another, he betakes 
himself to entreaty : and this may be observed of mankind in all ages 



160 DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 

and countries of the world. Now what is universal may be called na- 
tural ; and it seems probable that God, as our supreme governor, should 
expect that toward himself which, by a natural impulse, or by the ir- 
resistible order of our constitution, he has prompted us to pay to every 
other being on whom we depend. 

The saiT>e may be said of thanksgiving. 

Prayer likewise is necessary to keep up in the minds of mankind a 
sense of God's agency in the universe, and of their own dependency 
upon him. 

Yetj after all, the duty of prayer depends upon its efficacy : for I con- 
fess myself unable to conceive how any man can pray, or be obliged 
to pray, w^ho expects nothing from his prayer ; but who is persuaded, 
at the time he utters his request, that it cannot possibly produce the 
smallest impression upon the Being to whom it is addressed, or advan- 
tage to himself. Nov/ the efficacy of prayer imports that we obtain 
something in consequence of praying, which we should not have re- 
ceived without prayer ; against all expectation of which, the following 
objection has been often and seriously alleged : — " If it be most agree- 
able to perfect wisdom and justice that we should receive what we de- 
sire, God, as perfectly wise and just, will give it to us without asking : 
if it be not agreeable to these attributes of his nature, our entreaties 
cannot move him to give it us, and it were impious to expect that they 
should." In fewer words, thus : "If what we request be lit for us, we 
shall have it without praying ; if it be not fit for us, we cannot obtain 
it by praying." This objection admits but of one answer, namely, that 
it may be agreeable to perfect wisdom to grant that to our prayers 
which it would not have been agreeable to the same wisdom to have 
given us without praying for. But what virtue, you will ask, is there 
m prayer, which should make a favor consistent with wisdom, which 
would not have been so without it ? To this question, which contains 
the whole difficulty attending the subject, the following possibilities 
are offered in reply. 

1 . A favor granted to prayer may be more apt, on that very account, 
to produce good effects upon the person obliged, it may hold in the 
divine bounty, what exj)erience has raised into a proverb in the colla- 
tion ol human benefits, that what is obtained without asking is often- 
times received without gratitude. 

2. It may be consistent with the wisdom of the Deity to withhold 
his favors till they be asked for, as an expedient to encourage devotion 
in his rational creation, in order thereby to keep up and circulate a 
knowledge and sense of their dependency upon him. 

3. Prayer has a natural tendency to amend the petitioner himself, 
and thus to bring him within the rules which the wisdom of the Deity 
has prescribed to the dispensation of his favors. 

If these, or any other assignable suppositions, serve to remove the 
apparent repugnancy between the success of prayer and the character 
of the Deity, it is enough ', for the question with the petitioner is not, 
from which out of many motives, God may grant his petition, or in 
what particular manner he is moved by the 6U])plications of his 



J 



DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 161 

creatures ; but whether it be consistent with his nature to be moved at 
all, and whether there be any conceivable motives which may dispose 
the Divine will to grant the petitioner what he wants, in consequence 
of his praying for it ? It is sufficient for the petitioner, that he gain 
his end. It is not necessary to devotion, perhaps not very consistent 
with it, that the circuit of causes, by which his prayers prevail, should 
be known to the petitioner, much less that they should be present to 
his imagination at the time. All that is necessary, is, that there be no 
impossibility apprehended in the matter. 

Thus much must be conceded to the objection, that prayer cannot 
reasonably be offered to God with all the same views with which we 
oftentimes address our entreaties to men (views which are not common- 
ly or easily separated from it,) viz. to inform them of our wants and 
desires ; to tease them out by importunity ; to work upon their indo- 
lence or compassion, in order to persuade them to do what they ought 
to have done before, or ought not to do at all. 

But suppose there existed a prince, who was known by his subjects 
to act, of his own accord, always and invariably for the best ; the situ- 
ation of a petitioner, who solicited a favor or pardon from such a 
prince, would sufficiently resemble ours ; and the question with him, as 
with us would be, whether the character of the prince being considered, 
there remained any chance that he should obtain from him by prayer 
what he would not have received without it ? I do not conceive that 
the character of such a prince would necessarily exclude the effect of 
his subject's prayers ; for when that prince reflected that the earnestness 
and humility of the supplication had generated in the suppliant a frame 
of mind, upon which the pardon or favor asked would produce a per- 
manent and active sense of gratitude : that the granting of it to prayer 
would put others upon praying to him, and by that means preserve the 
love and submission of his subjects, upon which love and submission 
their own happiness, as well as his glory, depended ; that, besides that the 
memory of the particular kindness would be heightened and prolonged 
by the anxiety with which it had been sued for, prayer had in other re- 
spects so disposed and prepared the mind of the petitioner, as to render 
capable of future services him who before was unqualified for any : — 
might not that prince, I say, although he proceeded upon no other con- 
siderations than the strict rectitude and expediency of the measure, grant 
a favor or pardon to this man w^hich he did not grant to another, who 
was too proud, too lazy, or busy, too indifferent whether he received it 
or not, or too insensible of the sovereign's absolute power to give or to 
withhold it, ever to ask for it ? or even to the philosopher, who, from an 
opmion of the fruitlessness of all addresses to a prince of the character 
which he had formed to himself, refused in his own example and dis- 
couraged in others, all outward returns of gratitude, acknowledg- 
ments of duty, or application to the sovereign's mercy or bounty ; the 
disuse of which (seeing affections do not long subsist which are never 
expressed) was followed by a decay of loyalty and zeal among his sub- 
jects, and threatened to end in a forgetfulne§is of his rights, and a con 
tempt of his authority. These, together with other assignable conside- 



162 DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 

rations, and some perhaps inscrutable, and even inconceivable, by 
the persons upon whom his will was to be exercised, might pass in 
the mind of the prince, and move his councils ; while nothing, in the 
mean time, dwelt in the petitioner's thoughts but a sense of his own 
griefs and wants ] of the power and goodness from which alone he 
was to look for relief ] and of his obligation to endeavor, by future 
obedience, to render that person propitious to his happiness, in whose 
hands and at the disposal of whose mercy he found himself to be. 

The objection to prayer supposes, that a perfectly wise being must 
necessarily be inexorable ] but where is the proof that inexorability 
is any part of perfect wisdom ] especially of that wisdom which is ex- 
plained to consist in bringing about the most beneficial ends by the 
wisest means. 

The objection likewise assum.es another principle, which is attend- 
ed with considerable difficulty and obscurity, namely, that upon every 
occasion there is one^ and only one^ mode of acting for the best ; and 
that the Divine Will is necessarily determined and confined to that 
mode : ,both which positions presume a knowledge of universal na- 
ture, much beyond what we are capable of attaining. Indeed, when 
we apply to the Divine Nature such expressions as these, '' God 
771 us/ always do what is right," ''God cannot^ from the moral perfection 
and necessity of his nature, act otherwise than for the best," we ought 
to apply them with much indeterminateness and reserve ; or rather, we 
ought to confess, that there is something in the subject out of the reach 
of our apprehension ; for, in our apprehension, to be under a necessity 
of acting according to any rule, is inconsistent with free agency ) and it 
makes no difference which we can understand, whether the necessity 
be internal or external, or that the rule is the rule of perfect rectitude. 

But efficacy is ascribed to prayer without the proof, we are told, 
which can alone in such a subject produce conviction, — the confirma- 
tion of experience. Concerning the appeal to experience, I shall con- 
tent myself with this remark, that if prayer were suffered to disturb 
the order of second causes appointed in the universe too much, or to 
produce its effects with the same regularity that they do, it would in- 
troduce a change into human affairs, which in some important respects 
would be evidently for the worse. Who, for example, would labor, if 
his necessities could be supplied with equal certainty by prayer ? How 
few would contain within any bounds of moderation those passions 
and pleasures which at present are checked only by disease, or the 
dread of it, if prayer would infallibly restore health % In short, if the 
efficacy of prayer were so constant and observable as to be relied upon 
beforehand^ it is easy to foresee that the conduct of mankind would, 
in proportion to that reliance, become careless and disorderly. Ii is 
possible, in the nature of things, that our prayers may, in many in- 
stances, be efficacious, and yet our experience in their efficacy be dubi- 
ous and obscure. Therefore, if the light of nature instruct us by any 
other arguments to hope for effect from prayer ] still more, if the Scrip- 
tures authorize these hojfes by promises of acceptance ; it seems not a 
sufficient reason for calling in question the reality of such effects, that 



DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 163 

our observations of them are ambiguous ; especially since it appears 
probable that this very ambiguity is necessary to the happiness and 
safety of human life. 

But some, vrhose objections do not exclude all prayer, are offended 
with the mode of prayer in use among us, and vrith many of the sub- 
jects which are almost universally introduced into public worship, and 
recommended to private devotion. To pray for particular favors by 
name, is to dictate, it has been said, to Divine wisdom and goodness : 
to intercede fov others, especially .for whole nations and empires, is 
still worse : it is to presume that we possess such an interest with the 
Deity, as to be able, by our applications, to bend the most important 
of his counsels : and that the happiness of others, and even the pros- 
perity of communities, is to depend upon this interest, and upon our 
choice. Now how unequal soever our knowledge of the Divine econo- 
my may be to the solution of this difficulty, which requires perhaps 
a comprehension of the entire plan, and of all the ends of God's moral 
government to explain satisfactorily, we can understand one thing 
concerning it, — that it is, after all, nothing more than the making of 
one man the instrument of happiness and misery to another ; which is 
perfectly of a piece with the course and order that obtain, and which 
we must believe were intended to obtain in human affairs. Why may 
we not be assisted by the prayers of other men, who are beholden for 
our support to their labor ? Why may not our happiness be made in 
some cases to depend upon the intercession, as it certainly does in 
many, upon the good offices of our neighbors ? The happiness and 
misery of great numbers we see oftentimes at the disposal of one 
man's choice, or liable to be much affected by his conduct : what 
greater difficulty is there in supposing that the prayers of an individu- 
al may avert a calamity from multitudes, or be accepted to the benefit 
of whole communities 1 



CHAPTER m. 

OF THE DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER AS REPRESENTED IN SCRIP- 
TURE. 

The reader will have obsei-ved, that the reflections stated in the 
preceding chapter, whatever truth and weight they may be allowed 
to contain, rise many of them no higher than to negative arguments 
in favor of the propriety of addressing prayer to God. To prove 
that the efficacy of prayers is not inconsistent with the attributes of 
the Deity does not prove that prayers are actually efficacious : and 
in the want of that unequivocal testimony which experience alone 
could afford to this point (but which we do not possess, and have 
seen good reason why we are not to expect,) the light of nature 
leaves us to controverted probabilities, drawn from the impulse by 
which mankind have been almost universally prompted to devotion, 



i64 DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER. 

and from some beneficial purposes, which, it is conceived, may be 
better answered by the audience of prayer than any other mode of 
communicating the same blessings. The Revelations, which we 
deem authentic, completely supply this defect of natural religion. 
They require prayer to God as a duty ] and they contain positive as- 
surance of its efficacy and acceptance. We could have no reasona- 
ble motive for the exercise of prayer, without believing that it may 
avail to the relief of our wants. This belief can only be founded, 
either in a sensible experience of the effect of prayer, or in promises 
of acceptance signified by divine authority. Our knowledge would 
have come to us in the former way, less capable indeed of doubt, 
but subjected to the abuses and inconveniences briefly described 
above ] in the latter w^ay, that is, by authorized significations of 
God's general disposition to hear and answer the devout supplica- 
tions of his creatures, we are encouraged to pray, but not to place 
such a dependance upon prayer as miglit relax other obligations, or 
confound the order of events and of human expectations. 

The Scriptures not only affirm the propriety of prayer in general, 
but furnish precepts or examples w^hich justify some topics and 
some modes of prayer that have been thought exceptionable. And 
as the whole subject rests so much upon the foundation of Scrip- 
ture, I shall put down at length texts applicable to the five follow- 
ing heads : to the duty and efficacy of prayer in general ] of prayer 
for particular favors by name ] for public national blessings • of in- 
tercession for others ; of the repetition of unsuccessful prayers. 

1. Texts enjoining prayer in general: "Ask, and it shall be 
given you ) seek and you shall find — If ye, being evil, know how to 
give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your 
Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask 
him ?" " Watch ye, therefore and pray ahoays, that ye may be ac- 
counted worthy to escape all those things that shall come to pass, 
and to stand before the Son of Man." " Serving the Lord, rejoicing 
in hope, patient in tribulation, continuing instant zn prayer^ " Be 
careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication^ 
with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God." "I 
will, therefore, that men pray everywhere, lifting up holy hands 
without wrath and doubting." " Pray withoxU ceasing.''^ Matt. vii. 
7, 11 ; Luke, xxi. 36; Rom. xii, 12 ; Philip, iv. 6 ; 1 Thess. v. 
17 ; 1 Tim. ii. 8. Add to these, that Christ's reproof of the osten- 
tation and prolixity of pharisaical prayers, and his recommendation 
to his disciples, of retirement and simplicity in theirs, together with 
his dictating a particular form of prayer, all presupposes prayer to 
be an acceptable and availing service. 

2. Examples of prayer for particular favors by name : " For 
this thing," (to wit some bodily infirmity, which he calls ' a thorn 
given him in the flesh,') "I besought the Lord thrice that it might 
depart from me." " Night and day praying exceedingly, that we 
might see your face, and perfect that which is lacking in your faith ." 
9. Coi. xii. 83 1 Thess. iii. 10. 



PRIVATE PRAYER, ETC. 165 

3. Directions to pray for national or public blessings : ^^Pray 
for the peace of Jerusalem.^' — " Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time 

of the latter rain ; so the Lord shall make bright clouds, and give 
them showers of rain, to every one grass in the field." " I exhort, 
therefore, that first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and 
giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that 
are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable lie 
in all godliness and honesty ; for this is good and acceptable in 
the sight of God our Savior." Psalm cxxii. 6 ] Zech. x. 1 ; 1 
Tim. ii. 1, 2, 3. 

4. Examples of intercession, and exhortations to intercede for 
others : — •' And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said. Lord, 
why doth thy wrath wax hot against thy people ? Remember Abra- 
ham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants. And the Lord repented of the 
evil which he thought to do unto his people." " Peter, therefore, 
was kept in prison ; but prayer was made without ceasing of the 
Church unto God /or him ;" — '' For God is my witness, that without 
ceasing 1 make meyition of you always in my prayers^ — " Now I be- 
seech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake, and for the 
love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me, in your prayers 
for mey " Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for 
another^ that ye may be healed : the effectual fervent prayer of a 
righteous man availeth much." Exod. xxxii. 11 ] Acts xii. 5 ; 
Rom. i. 9, XV. 30 ] James v. 16. 

5. Declarations and examples authorizing the repetition of un- 
successful prayer : — "And he spake :i parable unto them to this 
end, that men ought always to pray and not to faint." " And he 
left them and went away again, and prayed the third timc^saying the 
same words.''^ " For this thing I besought the Lord thrice^ that it 
might depart from me." Luke, xviii. 1 ] Matt. xxvi. 44 ; 2 Cor. 
xii. 8.* 



CHAPTER IV. 



OF PRIVATE PRAYER, FAMILY PRAYER, AND PUBLIC WORSHIP. 

Concerning these three descriptions of devotion, it is first of all 
to be obsen^ed, that each has its separate and peculiar use; and 
therefore, that the exercise of one species of worship, however regu- 

* The reformed Churches of Christendom, sticking close in this article to their 

fuide, have laid aside prayers for the dead, as authorized by no precept or prece- 
ent found in Scripture. For the same reason they properly reject the invocations 
of saints ; as also because such invocations suppose, in the saints whom they address, 
a knowledge which can perceive what passes in different regions of the earth at the 
same time. And they deem it too much to take for granted, without the smallest 
intimation of 6uch a thing in Scripture, that any created being possesses a faculty 
little short of that omniscience and omnipreseA«e n^hich they ascribe to the Deity. 



166 PRIVATE PRAYER, ETC. 

lar it be, does not supersede or dispense with the obligation of 
either of the other two. 

1 . Private prayer is recommended for the sake of the following 
advantages : — 

Private wants cannot always be made the subject of public 
prayer • "but whatever reason there is for praying at all, there is the 
same for making the sore and grief of each man's own heart the bu- 
siness of his application to God. This must be the office of private 
exercises of devotion, being imperfectly, if at all, practicable in any 
other. 

Private prayer is generally more devout and earnest than the 
share we are capable of taking in joint acts of worship ; because it 
atfords le i sure and opportunity for the circumstantial recollection of 
those personal wants, by the remembrance and ideas of which the 
warmth and earnestness of prayer are chiefly excited. 

Private prayer, in proportion as it is usually accompanied with 
more actual thought and reflection of the petitioner's own, has a 
greater tendency than other modes of devotion to revive and fasten 
upon the mind the general impressions of religion. Solitude power- 
fully assists this eifect. When a man finds himself alone in com- 
munication with his Creator, his imagination becomes filled with a 
conflux of awful ideas concerning the universal agency and invisi- 
ble presence of that Being ; concerning what is likely to become of 
himself ; and of the superlative importance of providing for the 
happiness of his future existence, by endeavors to please him who 
is the arbiter of his destiny : reflections which, whenever they gain 
admittance, for a season overwhelm all others ] and leave, when 
they depart, a solemnity upon the thoughts that will seldom fail, in 
some degree, to affect the conduct of life. 

Private prayer, thus recommended by its own propriety, and by 
advantages not attainable in any form of religious communion, re- 
ceives a superior sanction from the authority and example of Christ : 
" When thou prayest, enter into thy closet ] and when thou hast shut 
the door, pray to thy Father which is in secret : and thy Father, 
which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly." " And when he 
had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to 
prayy Matt. vi. 6; xiv. 23. 

2. Family Prayer. 

The peculiar use of family piety consists in its influence upon 
servants, and the young members of a family who want sufficic nt 
seriousness and reflection to retire of their own accord to the exer- ' 
cise of private devotion, and whose attention you cannot easily com- 
mand in public worship. The example also and authority of a father 
and master act in this way with the greatest force ; for his pri- 
vate prayers, to which his children and servants are not witnesses, 
act not at all upon them as examples ; and his attendance upon 
public worship they will readily impute to fashion, to a care to 
preserve appearances, to a concern for decency and character, and 
to many motives besides a sense of duty to God. Add to this, the 



PRIVATE PRAYER, ETC. 167 

forms of public worship, in proportion as they are more comprehen- 
sive, are always less interesting than family prayers ] and that the 
ardor of devotion is better supported, and the sympathy more easily 
propagated, through a small assembly, connected by the affections 
of domestic societv? than in the presence of a mixed congregation. 

3. Public iVorsliip. 

If the worship of God be a duty of religion, public worship is a 
necessary institution ; forasmuch as, without it, the greater part of 
mankind would exercise no religious worship at all. 

These assemblies afford also, at the same time, opportunities for 
moral and religious instruction to those who otherwise would re- 
ceive none. In all Protestant, and in most Christian countries, the 
elements of natural religion and the important parts of the Evangelic 
history are familiar to the lowest of the people. This competent 
degree and general diffusion of religious knowledge among all 
orders of Christians, which will appear a great thing when compared 
with the intellectual condition of barbarous nations, can fairly, I 
think, be ascribed to no other cause than the regular establishment 
of assemblies for divine worship ] in which either portions of Scrip- 
ture are recited and explained, or the principles of Christian erudi- 
tion are so constantly taught in sermons, incorporated with liturgies, 
or expressed in extempore prayer, as to imprint, by the very repeti- 
tion, some knowledge and memory of these subjects upon the most 
unqualified and careless hearer. 

Tne two reasons above stated bind all the members of a communi- 
ty to uphold public worship by their presence and example, al- 
though the helps and opportunities which it affords may not be ne- 
cessary to the devotion or edification of all ] and to some may be use- 
less ] for it is easily foreseen how soon religious assemblies would 
fall into contempt and disuse, if that class of mankind who are 
above seeking instruction in them, and want not that their own piety 
should be assisted by either forms or society in devotion, were 
to withdraw their attendance ] especially Avhen it is considered that 
all who please are at liberty to rank themselves of this class. This 
argument meets the only serious apology that can be made for the 
absenting of ourselves from public worship. " Surely (some will 
say) I may be excused from going to church, so long as I pray at 
home ; and have no reason to doubt that my prayers are as accepta- 
ble and efficacious in my closet as in a cathedral 3 still less can 1 
think myself obliged to sit out a tedious sermon, in order to hear 
what is known already, what is better learned from books or sug- 
gested by meditation." They whose qualifications and habits best 
supply to themselves all the effect of public ordinances, will be the 
last to prefer this excuse, when they advert to the general conse- 
quence of setting up such an exemption, as well as when they con- 
sider the turn which is sure to be given in the neighborhooa to their 
absence from public worship. You stay from church to employ 
the Sabbath at home in exercise and studies suited to its proper 
business : your next neighbor stays from church to spend the seveuth. 



lb'8 • PUBLIC WORSHIP. 

day less religiously than he passes any of the six, in a sleepy stupid 
rest, or at some rendezvous of drunkenness and debauchery, and yet 
thinks that he is only imitating you, because you both agree in not 
going to church. The same consideration should overrule many 
small scruples concerning the rigorous propriety of some things, 
which may be contained in the forms, or admitted into the adminis- 
tration of the public worship of our communion : for it seems im- 
possible that even " two or three should be gathered together," in 
any act of social worship, if each one require from the rest an im- 
plicit submission to his objections, and if no man will attend upon a 
religious service which in any point contradicts his opinion of truth, 
or falls short of his ideas of perfection. 

Besides the direct necessity of public worship to the greater part 
of every Christian community (supposing worship at all to be a 
Christian duty,) there are other valuable advantages growing out of 
the use of religious assemblies, without being designed in the insti- 
tution, or thought of by the individuals who compose them. 

1 . Joining in prayer and praises to their common Creator and 
Governor, has a sensible tendency to unite mankind together, and to 
cherish and enlarge the generous affections. 

So many pathetic reflections are awakened by every exercise of 
social devotion, that most men, I believe, carry away from public 
worship a better temper toward the rest of mankind than they 
brought with them. Sprung from the same extraction, preparing 
together for the period of all worldly distinctions, reminded of our 
mutual infirmities and common dependency, imploring and receiv- 
ing support and supplies from the same great source of power and 
bounty, having all one interest to secure, one Lord to serv^e, one 
judgment, the supreme object of all their hopes and fears, to look 
towards ; it is hardly possible, in this position, to behold mankind 
as strangers, competitors, or enemies ; or not to regard them as chil- 
dren of the same family, assembled before their common parent, and 
with some portion of tlfie tenderness which belongs to the m.ost en- 
dearing of our domestic relations. It is not to be expected that any 
single effect of this kind should be considerable or lasting ; but the 
frequent return of such sentiments as the presence of a devout con- 
gregation naturally suggests, will gradually melt down the rug- 
gedness of many unkind passions, and may generate in time, a per- 
manent and productive benevolence. 

2. Assemblies for the purpose of divine worship, placing men 
under impressions which they are taught to consider their relation to 
the Deity, and to contemplate those around them with a view to 
that relation, force upon their thoughts the natural equality of the 
human species, and thereby promote humility and condescension in 
the highest orders of the community, and inspire the lowest with a 
sense of their rights. The distinctions of civil life are almost al- 
ways insisted upon too much, and urged too far. Whatever, there- 
fore, conduces to restore the level, by qualifying the dispositions 
which grow out of great elevation, or depression of rank, improvpis 



FORMS OF PRAYER. i69 

the character on both sides. Now things are made to appear little, 
by being placed beside what is great. In which manner, superiori- 
ties that occupy the whole field of imagination will vanish, or 
shrink to their proper diminutiveness, when compared with the dis- 
tance by which even the highest of men are removed from the Su- 
preme Being ; and this comparison is naturally introduced by all acts 
of joint worship. If ever the poor man holds up his head, it is at 
church ; if ever the rich man views him with respect, it is there : — 
and both will be the better, and the public profited, the oftener they 
meet in a situation in which the consciousness of dignity in the one 
is tempered and mitigated, and the spirit of the other erected and 
confirmed. We recommend nothing adverse to subordinations 
which are established and necessary ] but then it should be remem- 
bered that subordination itself is an evil, being an evil to the subor- 
dinate, who are the majority, and therefore ought not to be carried 
a tittle beyond what the greater good, the peaceable government of 
the community, requires. 

The public worship of Christians is a duty of Divine appoint- 
ment. " Where two or three," says Christ, " are gathered together 
in my name, there am 1 in the midst of them."* This invitation wiii 
want nothing of the force of a command with those who respect the 
person and authority from which it proceeds. Again, in the Epistle 
to the Hebrews : " Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, 
as the manner of some is;"f which reproof seems as applicable to 
the desertion of our public worship at this day, as to the forsaking 
the religious assemblies of Christians in the age of the Apostle. 
Independently of these passages of Scripture, a disciple of Christi- 
anity will hardly think himself at liberty to dispute a practice set on 
foot by the inspired preachers of his religion, coeval with its insti- 
tution, and retained by every sect into which it has been since 
divided. 



CHAPTER V. 

OF FORMS OF PRAYER IN PUBLIC WORSHIP. 

Liturgies, or preconcerted forms of public devotion, being neither 
enjoined in Scripture, nor forbidden, there can be no good reason 
for either receiving or rejecting them, but that of expediency; 
which expediency is to be gathered from a comparison of the advan- 
tages and disadvantages attending upon this mode of worship, with 
those which usually accompany extemporary prayer. 

The advantages of a liturgy are these : 

1. That it prevents absurd,' extravagant, or impious addresses to 
God, which, in an order of men so numerous as the sacerdotal, the 

* Matt xviii. 20. f Heb x. 25. 

H 



170 FORMS OF PRAYER. 

folly and enthusiasm of many must always be in danger of produ 
cing. where the conduct of the public worship is intrusted, without 
restraint or assistance, to the discretion and abilities of the officia- 
ting minister. 

2. That it prevents the confusion of extemporary prayer, in which 
the congregation, being ignorant of each petition before they hear it, 
and having little or no time to join in it after they have heard it, are 
confounded between their attention to the minister and to their own 
devotion. The devotion of the hearer is necessarily suspended until 
a petition be concluded ; and before he can assent to it, or properly 
adopt it, that is, before he can address the same request to God for 
himself and from himself, his attention is called off to keep pace with 
what succeeds. Add to this, that the mind of the hearer is held in 
continual expectation, and detained from its proper business, by the 
very novelty with which it is gratified. A congregation may be 
pleased and affected with the prayers and devotion of their minister, 
without joining in them ; in like manner as an audience oftentimes are 
with the representation of devotion upon the stage, who, nevertheless, 
come away without being conscious of having exercised any act of 
devotion themselves. Joint prayer, which among all denominations 
of Christians is the declared design of " coming together," is prayer 
in which all join ; and not that which one alone in the congrega- 
tion conceives and delivers, and of which the rest are merely hearers. 
This objection seems fundamental, and holds even where the minis- 
ter's office is discharged with every possible advantage and accom- 
plishment. The laboring recollection, and embarrassed or tumultu- 
ous delivery, of many extempore speakers, form an additional ob- 
jection to this mode of public worship : for these imperfections are 
very general, and give great pain to the serious part of a congrega- 
tion, as well as afford a profane diversion to the levity of the other 
part. 

These advantages of a liturgy are connected with two principal 
inconveniences ; first, that forms of prayer composed in one age be- 
come unfit for another, by the unavoidable change of language, cir- 
cumstances, and opinions ; secondly, that the perpetual repetition of 
the same form of words produces weariness and inattentiveness in 
the congregation. However, both these inconveniences are in their 
nature vincible. Occasional revisions of a liturgy may obviate the 
first, and devotion will supply a remedy for the second : or they 
may both subsist in a considerable degree, and yet be outweighed by 
the objections which are inseparable from extemporary prayer. 

The Lord's Prayer is a precedent, as well as a pattern, for forms 
of prayer. Our Lord appears, if not to have prescribed, at least to 
have authorized, the use of fixed forms, when he complied with the 
request of the disciple who said unto him, '' Lord, teach us to pray, 
as John also taught his disciples." Luke xi. 1. 

The properties required in a public liturgy are, that it be compen- 
dious ; that it express just conceptions oi the Divine Attributes ; 
that it recite such wants as a congregation are likely to feel, and no 



FORMS OF PRAYER. 171 

Other J and that it contain as few controverted propositions as possi* 
b]e. 

1. That it be compendious. 

It were no difficult task to contract the liturgies of most churches 
into half their present compass, and yet retain every distinct petition, 
as well as the substance of every sentiment, which can be found in 
them. But brevity may be studied too much. The composer of a 
liturgy must not sit down to his work with the hope that the devo- 
tion of the congregation will be uniformly sustained throughout, or 
that every part will be attended to by every hearer. If this could be 
depended upon, a very short service would be sufficient for every 
purpose that can be answered or designed by social worship : but 
seeing the attention of most men is apt to wander and return at in- 
tervals, and by starts, he will admit a certain degree of amplification 
and repetition, of diversity of expression upon the same subject, aj^d 
variety of phrase and form with little addition to the sense, to the 
end that the attention which has been slumbering or absent during 
one part of the service maybe excited and recalled by another; and 
the assembly kept together until it may reasonably be presumed, 
that the most heedless and inadvertent have performed some act of 
devotion, and the most desultory attention been caught by some part 
or other of the public service. On the other hand, the too great 
length of church services is more unfavorable to piety, than almost 
any fault of composition can be. It begets, in many, an early and 
unconquerable dislike to the public worship of their country or com- 
munion. They come to church seldom 3 and enter the doors, when 
they do come, under the apprehension of a tedious attendance, which 
they prepare for at the first, or soon after relieve, by composing 
themselves to a drowsy forgetfulness of the place and duty, or by 
sending abroad their thoughts in search of more amusing occupa- 
tion. Although there may be some few of a disposition not to be 
wearied with religious exercises ; yet, where a ritual is prolix, and 
the celebration of divine service long, no effect is in general to be 
looked for, but that indolence will find in it an excuse, and piety be 
disconcerted by impatience. 

The length and repetitions complained of in our liturgy are not so 
much the fault of the compilers, as the effect of uniting into one 
service what was originally, but with very little regard to the con- 
veniency of the people, distributed into three. Notwithstanding thai 
dread of innovations in religion, which seems to have become the 
panic of the age, few, I should suppose, would be displeased with 
such omissions, abridgments, or change in the arrangement, as the 
combination of separate services must necessarily require, even sup- 
posing each to have been faultless in itself. If, together with these 
alterations, the Epistles and Gospels, and Collects which precede 
them, were composed and selected with more regard to unity of sub- 
ject and design; and the Psalms and Lessons either left to the choice 
of the minister, or better accommodated to the capacity of the au- 
dience, and the edification of modern life ; the Church of England 



1f2 FORMS OF PRAYER. 

would be in possession of a liturgy in which those who assent to 
her doctrines would have little to blame, and the most dissatisfied 
must acknowledge many beauties. The style throughout is excel- 
lent; calm, without coldness; and, though every where sedate, often- 
times affecting. The pauses in the service are disposed at proper in- 
tervals. The transitions from one office of devotion to another, from 
confession to prayer, from prayer to thanksgiving, from thanksgiv- 
ing to "hearing of the word," are contrived, like scenes in a drama, 
to supply the mind with a succession of diversified engagements. — 
As much variety is introduced also in the form of praying, as this 
kind of composition seems capable of admitting. The prayer at one 
time is continued ; at another, broken by responses, or cast into 
short alternate ejaculations ; and sometimes the congregation is called 
upon to take its share in the service, by being left to complete a sen- 
tence which the minister had begun. The enumeration of human 
wants and sufferings in the Litany is almost complete. A Christian 
petitioner can have few things to ask of God, or to deprecate, which 
he will not find there expressed, and for the most part with inimita- 
ble tenderness and simplicity. 

2. That it express just conceptions of the Divine Attributes. 

This is an article in which no care can be too great. The popu- 
lar notions of God are formed, in a great measure, from the accounts 
which the people receive of his nature and character in their religious 
assemblies. An error here becomes the error of multitudes : and as 
it is a subject in which almost every opinion leads the way to some 
practical consequence, the purity or depravation of public manners 
will be affected, among other causes, by the truth or corruption of 
the public forms of worship. 

3. That it recites such wants as the congregation are likely to feel, 
and no other. 

Of forms of prayer which offend not egregiously against truth 
and decency, that has the most merit which is best calculated to keep 
alive the devotion of the assembly. It were to be wished, therefore, 
that every part of a liturgy were personally applicable to every in- 
dividual in the congregation ; and that nothing were introduced to 
internipt the passion, or damp the flame, which it is not easy to re- 
kindle. Upon this principle, the state prayers in our liturgy should 
be fewer and shorter. Whatever may be pretended, the congrega- 
tion do not feel that concern in the subject of these prayers which 
must be felt ere ever prayers be made to God with earnestness. The 
state style likewise seems unseasonably introduced into these prayers, 
as ill according with that annihilation of human greatness of which 
every act that carries the mind to God presents the idea. 

4. That it contain as few controverted propositions as possible. 

We allow to each church the truth of its peculiar tenets, and all 
the importance which zeal can ascribe to them. We dispute not 
here the right or the expediency of framing creeds or of imposing 
subscriptions. But why should every position which a church 
maintains be woven with so much industry into her forms of public 



&A.BBAT1CAL INSTITUTIO^-S. 1/3 

worship ? Some are offended, and some are excluded : this is an 
evil of itself, at least to them ; and what advantage or satisfaction 
can be derived to the rest, from the separation of their brethren, it is 
difficult to imagine : unless it were a duty to publish our system of 
polemic divinity, under the name of making confession of 3ur faith, 
every time we worship God ; or a sin to agree in religious exercises 
with those from whom we differ in some religious opinions. Indeed, 
where one man thinks it his duty constantly to worship a being, 
whom another cannot, with the assent of his conscience, permit him^ 
self to worship at all, there seems to be no place for comprehension, 
or any expedient left but a quiet secession. All other diffeiences 
may be compromised by silence. If sects and schemes be an evi, 
they are as much to be avoided by one side as the other. If secta- 
ries are blamed for taking unnecessary offence, established churchfls 
are no less culpable for unnecessarily giving it ; they are bound it 
least to produce a command, or a reason of equivalent utility, f)r 
shutting out any from their communion, by mixing with divine wor- 
ship doctrines which, whether true or false, are unconnected in tleir 
nature with devotion. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OF THE USE OF SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS. 

An assembly cannot be collected unless the time of assembling be 
fixed and known beforehand : and if the design of the assembly 
require that it be holden frequently, it is easiest that it should return 
at stated intervals. This produces a necessity of appropriating set 
seasons to the social offices of religion. It is also highly convenient 
tkat the same seasons be observed throughout the country, that all 
may be employed, or all at leisure, together ; for if the recess from 
worldly occupation be not general, one man's business will perpetu- 
ally interfere with another man's devotion; the buyer will be calling 
at the shop when the seller is gone to church. This part, therefore, 
of the religious distinction of seasons, namely, a general intermis- 
sion of labor and business during times previously set apart for the 
exercise of public worship, is founded in the reasons which make 
public worship itself a duty. But the celebration of divine service 
never occupies the whole day. What remains, therefore, of 
Sunday, besides the part of it employed at church, must be consid- 
ered as a mere rest from the ordinary occupations of civil life : and 
he who would defend the institution, as it is required by law to be 
observed in Christian countries, unless he can produce a command 
for a Christian Sabbath, must point out the uses of it in that view. 

First, then, that interval of relaxation which Sunday affords to the 
laborious part of mankind, contributes greatly to the comfort and 
satisfaction of their lives, both as it refreshes them for the time, and 



i74 SABBATICAL IKSTITUTIONS. 

as it relieves their six days' labor by the prospect of a day of rest 
always approaching ; which could not be said of casual indulgences 
of leisure and rest, even were they more frequent than there is 
reason to expect they would be if left to the discretion or humani- 
ty of interested task-masters. To this difference it may be added, 
that holicays, which come seldom and unexpected, are unprovided, 
when the/ do come, with any duty or employment ] and the manner 
of spending them being regulated by no public decency or established 
usage, they are commonly consumed in rude, if not criminal pastimes, 
in stupid sloth, or brutish intemperance. Whoever considers how 
iruch Sabbatical institutions conduce, in this respect, to the happi- 
ress and civilization of the laboring classes of mankind, and reflects 
low great a majority of the human species these classes compose, 
vill acknowledge the utility, whatever he may believe of the origin 
d this distinction; and will consequently perceive it to be every 
nan's duty to uphold the observation of Sunday, when once estab- 
lidied, let the establishment have proceeded from whom or from what 
auhority it will. 

Kor is there anything lost to the community by the intermission of 
pubic industry one day in the week. For, in countries tolerably ad- 
vanced in population and the arts of civil life, there is always enough 
of human labor, and to spare. The difficulty is not so much to 
procure as employ it. The addition ol the seventh day's labor to 
that of the other six would have no other effect than to reduce 
the price. The laborer himself, who deserved and suffered most by 
the change, would gain nothing. 

2. Sunday, by suspending many public diversions, and the ordina- 
ry rotation of employment, leaves to men of all ranks and profes- 
sions sufficient leisure, and not more than what is sufficient, both 
for the external offices of Christianity, and the retired, but equally 
necessary duties of religious meditation and inquiry. It is true, 
that many do not convert their leisure to this purpose ; but it is di 
moment, and is all which a public constitution can effect, that every 
one be allowed the opportunity. 

3. They, whose humanity embraces the whole sensitive creation, 
will esteem it no inconsiderable recommendation of a weekly return 
of public rest, that it affiDrds a respite to the toil of brutes. Nor can 
we omit to recount this among the uses which the Divine Founder 
of the Jewish Sabbath expressly appointed a law of the institution. 

We admit that none of these reasons show why Sunday should 
be preferred to any other day in the week, or one day in seven to one 
day in six, or eight : but these points, which in their nature are of 
arbitrary determination, being established to our hands, our obliga- 
tion applies to the subsisting establishment, so long as we confess that 
some such institution is necessary, and are neither able, nor attempt, 
to substitute any other in its place. 



SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS. 175 

CHAPTER VII. 

OF THE SCRIPTURE ACCOUNT OF SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS. 

The subject, so far as it makes any part of Christian morality, is 
contained in two questions : — 

1 . Whether the command, by which the Jewish Sabbath was in- 
stituted, extends to Christians ? 

2. Whether any new command was delivered by Christ, or any 
other day substituted in the place of the Jewish Sabbath by the 
authority or example of his apostles ? 

In treating of the first question, it will be necessary to collect the 
accounts which are preserved of the institution in the Jewish his- 
tory ; for the seeing these accounts together, and in one point of 
view, will be the best preparation for the discussion or judging of 
any arguments on one side or the other. 

In the second chapter of Genesis, the historian having concluded 
his account of the six days' creation, proceeds thus : " And on the 
Beventh day God ended his work which he had made : and God 
blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because that in it he had 
rested from all his work which God created and made." After this 
we hear no more of the Sabbath, or of the seventh day, as in any 
manner distinguished from the other six, until the history brings us 
down to the sojourning of the Jews in the wilderness, when the fol- 
lowing remarkable passage occurs. Upon the complaint of the people 
for want of food, God was pleased to provide for their relief by 
a miraculous supply of manna, which was found every morning upon 
the ground about the camp ; " and they gathered it every morning, 
every man according to his eating ] and when the sun waxed hot, it 
melted : and it came to pass, that on the sixth day they gathered 
twice as much bread, two omers for one man: and all the rulers of 
the congregation came and told Moses ; and he said untothem, This 
is that which the Lord hath said, To-morrow is the rest of the holy 
Sabbath unto the Lord ; bake that which ye will bake, to-day, and 
seethe that ye will seethe ; and that which remaineth over, lay up 
for you, to be kept until the morning. And they laid it up till the 
morning, as Moses bade ; and it did not stink [as it had done before, 
when some of them left it till the morning,] neither was there any 
worm therein. And Moses said. Eat that to-day ; /or fo-cfay is a 
Sabbath unto the Lord ; to-day ye shall not find it in the field. Six 
days ye shall gather it, but on the seventh day, which is the Sabbath, 
in it there shall be none. And it came to pass, that there went out 
some of the people on the seventh day for to gather, and they found 
none. And the Lord said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep 
my commandments and my laws ? See, for that the Lord hath given 
you the Sabbath^ therefore that he giveth you on the sixth day the 
bread of two days : abide ye every man in his place ; let no man go 
out of his place on the seventh day. So the people rested on the 
seventh day." Exodus, xvi. 



176 SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS. 

Not long after this, the Sabbath, as is well known, was established 
with great solemnity, in the fourth commandment. 

Now, in my opinion, the transaction in the wilderness above reci- 
ted was the first actual institution of the Sabbath. For if the Sabbath 
had been instituted at the time of the creation, as the words in Gene- 
sis may seem at first sight to import ; and if it had been observed 
all along from that time to the departure of the Jews out of Egypt, a 
period of about two thousand five hundred years-, it appears unac- 
countable that no mention of it, no occasion of even the obscurest al- 
lusion to it should occur, either in the general history of the world 
before the call of Abraham, which contains, we admit, only a few 
memoirs of its early ages, and those extremely abridged ; or, which 
is more to be wondered at, in that of the lives of the first three Jewish 
patriarchs, which in many parts of the account is sufficiently circum- 
stantial and domestic. Nor is there in the passage above quoted 
from the sixteenth chapter of Exodus, any intimation that the Sab- 
bath, when appointed to be observed, was only the revival of an 
ancient institution, which had been neglected, forgotten or suspend- 
ed ; nor is any such neglect imputed either to the inhabitants of the 
old world, or to any part of the family of Noah • nor, lastly, is any 
permission recorded to dispense with the institution during the cap- 
tivity of the Jews in Egypt, or on any other public emergency. 

The passage in the second chapter of Genesis, which creates the 
whole controversy upon the subject, is not inconsistent with this 
opinion : for, as the seventh day was erected into a Sabbath, on ac- 
count of God's resting upon that day from the work of the creation, 
it was natural enough in the historian, when he had related the his- 
tory of the creation, and of God's ceasing from it on the seventh day, 
to add : " And God blessed the- seventh day and sanctified it, because 
that on it he had rested from all his work which God created and 
made ;" although the blessing and sanctification, i. e.^ the religious 
distinction and approbation of that day, were not actually made till 
many ages afterward. The words do not assert that God then 
" blessed " and " sanctified " the seventh day, but that he blessed 
and sanctified it for that reason ; and if any ask why the Sabbath, 
or sanctification of tbe seventh day, was then mentioned, if it was 
not then appointed, the answer is at hand : the order of connexion, 
and not of time, introduced the mention of the Sabbath, in the his- 
tory of the subject which it was ordained to commemorate. 

This interpretation is strongly supported by a passage in the prophet 
Ezekiel, where the Sabbath is plainly spoken of as given (and 
what else can that mean, but SiS first instituted ?) in the wilderness. — 
"Wherefore I caused them to go forth out of the land of Egypt, and 
brought them into the wilderness : and I gave them my statutes and 
showed them my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in 
them : moreover also 1 gave them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between 
me and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify 
them." Ezek. xx. 10, 11, 12. 

Nehemiah also recounts the promulgation of the Sabbatic law 



SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS. 177 

among the transactions in the wilderness : which supplies another 
considerable argument in aid of our opinion: — "Moreover, thou 
leddest them in the day by a cloudy pillar, and in the night by a 
pillar of fire, to give them light in the way wherein they should go. 
Thou earnest down also upon Mount Sinai, and spakest with them 
from heaven, and gavest them right judgments and true laws, good 
statutes and commandments ) and madest knovm unto them thy holy 
Sabbath; and commandest them precepts, statutes, and laws by the 
hand of Moses thy servant ; and gavest them bread from heaven for 
their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock."* 
Nehem. ix. 12. 

If it be inquired what duties were appointed for the Jewish Sab- 
bath, and under what penalties and in what manner it was obsei^ved 
among the ancient Jews ; we find that, by the fourth commandment, 
a strict cessation from work was enjoined, not only upon Jews by 
birth or religious profession, but upon all who resided within the 
limits of the Jewish state ; that the same was to be permitted to their 
slaves and their cattle ; that this rest was not to be violated under 
pain of death : " Whosoever doeth any work in the Sabbath day, 
he shall surely be put to death." Exod. xxxi. 15. Besides which, 
the seventh day was to be solemnized by double sacrifices in the tem- 
ple : — "And on the Sabbath day two lambs of the first year without 
spot, and two tenth deals of flour for a meat offering, mingled with 
oil, and the drink offering thereof ', this is the burnt offering of every 
Sabbath, besides the continual burnt offering and his drink offering." 
Numb, xxviii. 9, 10. Also, holy convocations^ which mean, we pre- 
sume, assemblies for the purpose of public worship or religious in- 
struction, were directed to be holden on the Sabbath day: "the 
seventh day is a Sabbath of rest, a holy convocation." Levit. 
xxiii. 3. 

And accordingly we read, that the Sabbath was in fact observed 
among the Jews by a scrupulous abstinence from everything which, 
by any possible construction, could be deemed labor : as from dres- 
sing meat, from travelling beyond a Sabbath day's journey, or about 
a single mile. In the Maccabean wars, they suffered a thousand of 
their number to be slain, rather than do anything in their own defence 
on the Sabbath day. In the final siege of Jerusalem, after they had 
so far overcome their scruples as to defend their persons when attack- 
ed, they refused any operation on the Sabbath day, by which they 
might have interrupted the enemy in filling up the trench. After the 
establishment of synagogues (of the origin of which we have no 



* From the mention of the Sabbath in so close a connection with the descent of 
God upon Mount Sinai, and the delivery of the law from thence, one would be in- 
clined to believe that Nehemiah referred solely to the fourth commandment. But 
the fourth commandment certainly did not first make known the Sabbath. And it is 
apparent that Nehemiah observed not the order of events, for he speaks of what 
paf;?ed upon Mount Sinai before he mentions the miraculous supplies of bread and 
water, though the Jews did not arrive at Mount Sinai till some time after both these 
miracles were wrought. 

H 2 



178 SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS. 

account,) it was the custom to assemble in them on the Sabbath day, 
for the purpose of hearing the law rehearsed and explained, and for 
the exercise, it is probable, of public devotion: "For Moses of old 
time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the syna- 
gogues every Sabbath day?'' The seventh day is Saturday ; and, 
agreeably to the Jev/ish way of computing the day, the Sabbath held 
from six o'clock on the Friday evening to six o'clock on Saturday 
evening. These observations being premised, we approach the main 
question^ Whether the command by which the Jewish Sabbath was 
instituted extended to us "l 

if the divine command was actually delivered at the creation, it 
was addressed, no doubt, to the whole human species alike, and con- 
tinues, unless repealed by some subsequent revelation, binding upon 
all who come to the knowledge of it. If the command was published 
for the first time in the wilderness, then it was immediately directed 
to the Jewish people alone ] and something farther, either in the 
subject or circumstances of the command, will be necessary to show 
that it was designed for any other -. it is on this account that the 
question concerning the date of the institution was first to be consid- 
ered. The former opinion precludes all debate about the extent 
of the obligation ; the latter admits, and, priina facie, induces a belief, 
that the Sabbath ought to be considered as part of the peculiar law 
of the Jewish policy. 

Which belief receives great confirmation from the following argu- 
ments : 

The Sabbath is described as a sign between God and the people of 
Israel : — " Wherefore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, 
to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual 
covenant ; it is a sign bcttveen me and the children of Israel forever.'^ — • 
Exodus xxxi. 16, 17. Again : "And I gave them my statutes, and 
showed them my judgments, which if a man do he shall even live in 
them; moreover also 1 give them my Sabbaths, to be a sign between me 
and them, that they might know that I am the Lord that sanctify 
them." Ezek. xx. 12. Now it does not seem easy to understand 
how the Sabbath could be a sign between God and the people of 
Israel, unless the observance of it was peculiar to that people, and 
designed to be so. 

The distinction of the Sabbath is, in its nature, as much a positive 
ceremonial institution, as that of many other seasons which w^ere ap- 
pointed by the Levitical law to be kept holy, and to be observed by 
a strict rest ; as the first and seventh days of unleavened bread ] the 
feast of Pentecost ; the feast of Tabernacles : and in the twenty-third 
chapter of Exodus, the Sabbath and these are recited together. 

If the command by which the Sabbath was instituted be binding 
upon Christians, it must be binding as to the day, the duties, and the 
penalty 3 in none of which it is received. 

The observance of the Sabbath was not one of the articles enjoined 
by the apostles, in the fifteenth chapter of Acts, upon them " which 
from among the Gentiles were turned unto God." 



SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS. 179 

St. Paul evidently appears to have considered the Sabbath as part 
of the Jewish ritual, and not obligatory upon Christians as such : — 
" Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of 
an holy day, or of the new moon, or of the Sabbath days, which are a 
shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ." Col. ii. 16, 17. 

I am aware of only two objections which can be opposed to the 
I'orce of these arguments : one is, that the reason assigned in the 
fourth commandment for hallowing the seventh day, namely. 
" because God rested on the seventh day from the work of the crea- 
tion," is a reason which pertains to all mankind ; the other, that the 
command which enjoins the observation of the Sabbath is inserted in 
the decalogue, of which all the other precepts and prohibitions are of 
moral and universal obligation . 

Upon the first objection it may be remarked, that although in Exo- 
dus the commandment is founded upon God's rest from the creation^ 
in Deuteronomy the commandment is repeated with a reference to a 
different event : — " Six days shalt thou labor, and do all thy work : 
but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God ; in it thou 
shalt not do any work • thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy 
man servant, nor thy maid servant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any 
of thy cattle, nor the stranger that is within thy gates ^ that thy man 
servant and thy maid servant may rest as well as thou : and remem- 
ber that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord 
thy God brought thee out thence, through a mighty hand, and by a 
stretched out arm ; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to 
keep the Sabbath day." It is farther observable that God's rest from 
the creation is proposed as the reason of the institution, even where 
the institution itself is spoken of as peculiar to the Jews : " Where- 
fore the children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, to observe the Sab- 
bath throughout their generations, for a perpetual covenant : it is a 
sign between me and the children of Israel for ever : for in six days 
the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested 
and was refreshed." The truth is, these different reasons were 
assigned to account for different circumstances in the command. If 
a Jew inquired, why the seventh day was sanctified rather than the 
sixth or eighth ? his law told him, because God rested on the seventh 
dau from the creation. If he asked, why was the same rest indulged 
to slaves ; his law bade him remember that he also was a slave in 
the land of Egypt, and "that the Lord his God brought him out 
thence." In this view the two reasons are perfectly compatible with 
each other, and with a third end of the institution, its being a sign 
between God and the people of Israel ] but in this view they deter- 
mine nothing concerning the extent of the obligation. If the reason 
by its proper energy had constituted a natural obligation, or if it had 
been mentioned with a view to the extent of the obligation, we 
should submit to the conclusion that all were comprehended by the 
command who are concerned in the reason. But the Sabbatic rest 
being a duty which results from the ordination and authority of a 
positive law, the reason can be alleged no farther than as it ex- 



ISO SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS. 

plains the design of the legislator : and if it appear to be recited with 
an intentional application to one part of the law, it explains his 
design upon no other : if it be mentioned merely to account for the 
choice of the day, it does not explain his design as to the extent of 
the obligation. 

With respect to the second objection, that inasmuch as the other 
nine commandments are confessedly of moral and universal obliga- 
tion, it may reasonably be presumed that this is of the same ; we 
answer, that this argument will have less weight when it is consid- 
ered that the distinction between positive and natural duties, like 
other distinctions of modern ethics, was unknown to the simplicity 
of ancient language : and that there are various passages in Scrip- 
ture in which duties of a political, or ceremonial, or positive nature, 
and confessedly of partial obligation, are enumerated, and without 
any mark of discrimination, along with others which are natural and 
universal. Of this the following is an incontestable example. " But 
if a man be just, and do that which is lawful and right; and hath 
not eaten upon the mountains, nor hath lifted up his eyes to the 
idols of the house of Israel; neither hath defiled his neighbor's wife, 
neither hath come near to a menstruous woman ; and hath not op- 
pressed any, but hath restored to the debtor his pledge ] hath spoiled 
none by violence ; hath given his bread to the hungry, and hath cov- 
ered the naked with a garment ; he that hath not given upon usury, 
neither hath taken any iiicrease ; that hath withdrawn his hand from 
iniquity ; hath executed true judgment between man and man ; hath 
walked in my statutes, and hath kept my judgments, to deal truly ; 
he is just, he shall surely live, saith the Lord God." Ezekiel, xviii. 
5-9. The same thing may be observed of the apostolic decree re- 
corded in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts : — "It seemed good to the 
Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these 
accessary things, that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and 
from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication ^ from 
W^hich if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well." 

2. If the law by which the Sabbath was instituted was a law only 
to the Jews, it becomes an important question with the Christian in- 
quirer, whether the founder of his religion delivered any new com- 
mand upon the subject ; or, if that should not appear to be the case, 
whether any day was appropriated to the service of religion by the 
authority or example of his apostles. 

The practice of holding religious assemblies upon the first day of 
the week was so early and universal in the Christian church, that it 
carries with it considerable proof of having originated from some 
precept of Christ, or of his apostles, though none such be now ex- 
tant. It was upon the 1irst day of the week that the disciples were 
assembled, when Christ appeared to them for the first time after his 
resurrection : " then the same day at evening, being the first day of 
the week^ when the doors were shut where the disciples were assem- 
bled, for fear of the Jews, came Jesus, and stood in the midst of 
them." John, xx. 19. This, for anything that appears in the 



SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS. 181 

account, might, as to the day, have been accidental ; but in the 26th 
verse of the same chapter we read, that " after eight days," that is, 
on the iTrst day of the week following^ " again the disciples were 
within ;" which second meeting upon the same day of the week looks 
like an appointment and design to meet on that particular day. ]n 
the twentieth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, we find the same 
custom in a Christian church at a great distance from Jerusalem : — 
" And we came unto them to Troas in five days, where we abode 
seven days; and upon the first day of the week, when the disciples came 
together to break bread, Paul preached unto them." Acts, xx. 6, 7. 
The manner in which the historian mentions the disciples coming 
together to break bread on the fi.rst day of the week shows, I think, 
that the practice by this time was familiar and established. St. Paul 
to the Corinthians writes thus : " Concerning the collection for the 
saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do 
ye; upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in 
store as God hath prospered him, that there be no gathering when 1 
come." 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2. Which direction affords a probable proof, 
that the first day of the week was already, among the Christians 
both of Corinth and Galatia, distinguished from the rest by some 
religious application or other. At the time that St. John wrote the 
book of his Revelation, the first day of the week had obtained the 
name of the hordes day : — " I was in the spirit," says he, '• on the 
Lord^s day?^ Rev. i, 10. Which name, and St. John's use of it, 
sufficiently denote the appropriation of this day to the service of reli- 
gion, and that this appropriation was perfectly known to the churches 
of Asia. I make no doubt that by the Lord^s day was meant the 
first day of the week ; for we find no footsteps of any distinction of 
days which could entitle any other to that appellation. The subse- 
quent history of Christianity corresponds with the accounts delivered 
on this subject in Scripture. 

It will be remembered, that we are contending, by these proofs, for 
no other duty upon the first day of the week, than that of holding 
and frequenting relig:ious assemblies. A cessation upon that day 
from labor, beyond the time of attendance upon public worship, is 
not intimated in any passage in the New Testament ; nor did Christ or 
his Apostles deliver, that we know of, any command to their disci- 
ples for a discontinuance, upon that day, of the common offices of 
their professions ; a reserve which none will see reason to wonder 
at, or to blame as a defect in the institution, who consider that, in 
the primitive condition of Christianity, the observance of a new Sab- 
bath would have been useless, or inconvenient, or impracticable. 
During Christ's personal ministry, his religion was preached to the 
Jews alone. TJiey already had a Sabbath, which, as citizens and 
subjects of that economy, they were obliged to keep, and did keep. 
It was not therefore probable that Christ would enjoin another day of 
rest in conjunction with this. When the new religion came forth 
into the Gentile world, converts to it were, for the most part, made 
from those classes of society who have not their time and labor al 



i82 VIOLATION OF THE SABBATH. 

iheir own disposal ; and it was scarcely to be expected that unbe- 
lieving masters and magisti'ates, and they who directed the employ- 
ment of others, would permit their slaves and laborers to rest from 
their work every seventh day ] or that civil government, indeed, 
would have submitted to the loss of a seventh part of the public in- 
dustry, and that too in addition to the numerous festivals which the 
national religions indulged to the people ; at least, this would have 
been an incumbrance which might have greatly retarded the recep- 
tion of Christianity in the world. In reality, the institution of a 
weekly Sabbath is so connected with the functions of civil life, and 
requires so much of the concurrence of civil law in its regulation and 
support, that it cannot, perhaps, properly be made the ordinance of 
any religion, till that religion be received as the religion of the state. 

The opinion that Christ and his Apostles meant to retain the duties 
of the Jewish Sabbath, shifting only the day from the seventh to the 
first, seems to prevail without sufficient proof ] nor does any evidence 
remain in Scripture (of what, however, is not improbable,) that the 
first day of the week was thus distinguished in commemoration of 
oar Lord's resurrection. 

The conclusion from the whole inquiry (for it is our business to fol- 
low the arguments, to whatever probabiiity they conduct us) is this ; 
The assembling upon the first day of the week for the purpose of pub- 
lic worship and religious instruction is a law of Christianity, of Divine 
appointment ; the resting on that day from our employments longer 
than we are detained from them by attendance upon these assemblies 
is to Christians an ordinance of human institutions ] binding never- 
theless upon the conscience of every individual of a country in which 
a weekly Sabbath is established, for the sake of the beneficial pur- 
poses which the public and regular observ^ance of it promotes ; and 
recommended perhaps in some degree to the Divine approbation, by 
the resemblance it bears to what God was pleased to make a solemn 
part of the law which he delivered to the people of Israel, and by its 
subserviency to many of the same uses. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BY WHAT ACTS AND OMISSIONS THE DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN SAB- 
BATH IS VIOLATED. 

Since the obligation upon Christians to comply with the religious 
observance of Sunday arises from the public uses of the institution 
and the authority of the Apostolic practice, the manner of observing 
it ought to be that which best fulfils these uses, and conforms the 
nearest to this practice. 

The uses proposed by the institution are : — 

1 . To facilitate attendance upon public worship. 

2. To meliorate the condition of the laborious classes of mankind 
by regular and seasonable returns of rest. 



VIOLATION OF THE SABBATH. 183 

3. By a general suspension of business and amusement, to invite 
and enable persons of every description to apply their time and 
thoughts to subjects appertaining to their salvation. With the primi- 
tive Christians, the peculiar, and probably for some time the only, 
distinction of the first day of the week was the holding of religious 
assemblies upon that day. We learn, however, from the testimony 
of a very early writer among them, that they also reserved the day 
for religious meditations ] Unusquisque nostrum (saith Irenceus,) sab- 
hatizat spirit ualiter meditation legis, gaudens^ opijicium Dei admirans. 

Wherefore the duty of the day is violated, 

1st. By all such employments or engagements as (though differing 
from our ordinary occupation,) hinder our attendance upon public 
worship, or take up so much of our time as not to leave a sufficient 
part of the !^ay at leisure for religious reflection ; as the going of 
journeys, the paying or receiving of visits which engage the whole 
day, or employing the time at home in writing letters, settling accounts, 
or in applying ourselves to studies, or the reading of books which 
bear no relation to the business of religion. 

2dly. By unnecessary encroachments on the rest and liberty which 
Sunday ought to bring to the inferior orders of the community; as by 
keeping servants on that day confined and busied in preparations for the 
superfluous elegancies of our table or dress. 

3dly. By such recreations as are customarily forborne out of res- 
pect to the day : as hunting, shooting, fishing, public diversions, fre- 
quenting taverns, playing at cards or dice. 

If it be asked, as it often has been, wherein consists the difference 
between walking out with your staff or with your gun '? between 
spending the evening at home or in a tavern 1 between passing the 
Sunday afternoon at a game of cards, or in conversation not more 
edifying, nor always so inoffensive 1 to these, and to the same question 
under a variety of forms, and in a multitude of similar examples, 
we return the following answer : — That the religious observance of 
Sunday, if it ought to be retained at all, must be upholden by some 
public and visible distinctions : that, draw the line of distinction 
where you will, many actions which are situated on the confines of 
the line will differ very little, and yet lie on the opposite sides of it ; 
that every trespass upon that reserve which public decency has es- 
tablished, breaks down the fence by which the day is separated to 
the service of religion : that it is unsafe to trifle with scruples and 
habits that have a beneficial tendency^, although founded merely in 
custom : that these liberties, however intended, will certainly be con- 
sidered by those who observe them, not only as disrespectful to the 
day and institution, but as proceeding from a secret contempt of the 
Christian faith : that, consequently, they diminish a reverence for 
religion in others, so far as the authority of our opinion or the effica- 
cy of our example, reaches : or rather, so far as either will serve as 
an excuse of negligence to those who are glad of any : that as to 
cards and dice, which put in their claim to be considered among the 
fuirrnless occupations of a vacant hour, it may be observed, that few 



184 REVERENCING THE DEITY. 

find any difficulty in refraining from play on Sunday, except they 
who sit down to it with the views and eagerness of gamesters : that 
gaming is seldom innocent : that the anxiety and perturbations, how- 
ever, which it excites, are inconsistent with the tranquillity and frame 
of temper in which the duties and thoughts of religion should always 
both find and leave us ; and lastly we shall remark, that the example 
of other countries, where the same or greater license is allowed, 
affords no apology for irregularities in our own ] because a practice 
which is tolerated by public usage neither receives the same con- 
struction, nor gives the same offence, as where it is censured and 
prohibited. 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF REVERENCING THE DEITY. 

In many persons, a seriousness and sense of awe overspread the 
imagination, whenever the idea of the Supreme Being is presented 
to their thoughts. This effect, which forms a considerable security 
against vice, is the consequence not so much of reflection as of habit ; 
which habit being generated by the external expressions of reve- 
rence which we use ourselves, or observe in others, may be destroyed 
by causes opposite to these, and especially by that familiar levity 
with which some learn to speak of the Deity, of his attributes, provi- 
dence, revelations, or worship. 

God hath been pleased (no matter for what reason, although proba- 
bly for this,) to forbid the vain mention of his name : " Thou shalt 
not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." Now the mention 
is vain when it is useless ; and it is useless when it is neither likely 
nor intended to serve any good purpose ; as when it flows from the 
lips idle and unmeaning, or is applied, on occasions inconsistent with 
any considerations of religion and devotion, to express our anger, or 
earnestness, our courage or our rnirth ] or indeed when it is used at 
all, except in acts of religion, or in serious and seasonable discourse 
upon religious subjects. 

The prohibition of the third commandment is recognized by Christ, 
in his Sermon upon the Mount ] which sermon adverts to none but 
the moral parts of the Jewish law : '^ I say unto you, swear not at all ; 
but let your communication be Yea, yea ; Nay, nay : for whatso- 
ever is more than these cometh of evil," The Jews probably interpre- 
ted the prohibition as restrained to the name of Jehovah, the name 
which the Deity had appointed and appropriated to himself: Exod. 
vi. 3. The words of Christ extend the prohibition beyond the name 
of God, to everything associated with the idea: " Swear not, neither 
by heaven, for it is God's throne ; nor by the earth, for it is his foot- 
stool • neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the Great King." 
Matt. V. 35. 



REVERENCING THE DEITY. 185 

The offence of profane swearing is aggravated by the considera- 
tion, that in it duty and decency are sacrificed to the slendeiest temp- 
tations. Suppose the habit, either from affectation, or by negligence 
and inadvertency, to be already formed, it must always remain Avithin 
the power of the most ordinary resolution to correct it ; and it cannot, 
one would think, cost a great deal to relinquish the pleasure and 
honor which it confers. A concern for duty is in fact never strong, 
when the exertion requisite to vanquish a habit founded in no antece- 
dent propensity is thought too much or too painful. 

A contempt of positive duties, or rather of those duties for whicn 
the reason is not so plain as the command, indicates a disposition 
upon which the authority of revelation has obtained little influence. 
This remark is applicable to the oflfence of profane swearing, and 
describes, perhaps, pretty exactly the general character of those who 
are most addicted to it. 

Mockery and ridicule, when exercised upon the Scriptures, or even 
upon the places, persons, and forms set apart for the ministration of 
religion, fall within the meaning of the law which forbids the profana- 
tion of God's name ; especially as that law is extended by Christ's 
interpretation. They are moreover inconsistent with a religious 
frame of mind : for, as no one ever either feels himself disposed to 
pleasantry, or capable of being diverted with the pleasantry of others, 
upon matters in which he is deeply interested; so a mind intent 
upon the acquisition of heaven rejects with indignation every attempt 
to entertain it with jests, calculated to degrade or deride subjects 
which it never recollects but with seriousness and anxiety. Noth- 
ing but stupidity, or the most frivolous dissipation of thought, can 
make even the inconsiderate forget the supreme importance of every- 
thing which relates to the expectation of a future existence. While 
the infidel mocks at the superstitions of the vulgar, insults over their 
credulous fears, their childish errors, or fantastic rites, it does not 
occur to him to observe, that the most preposterous device by w^hich 
the weakest devotee ever believed he was securing the happiness of 
a future life, is more rational than unconcern about it. Upon this 
subject, nothing is so absurd as indifference: no folly so contempti- 
ble as thoughtlessness and levity. 

Finally; The knowledge of what is due to the solemnity of those 
interests, concerning which Revelation professes to inform and direct 
us, may teach even those who are least inclined to respect the preju- 
dices of mankind, to observe a decorum in the style and conduct of 
religious disquisitions, with the neglect of which many adversaries 
of Christianity are justly chargeable. Serious arguments are fair 
on all sides. Christianity is but ill defended by refusing audience 
or toleration to the objections of unbelievers. But while we would 
have freedom of inquiry restrained by no laws but those of decen- 
cy, we are entitled to demand, on behalf of a religion which holds 
forth to mankind assurances of immortality, that its credit be assailed 
by no other weapons than those of sober discussion and legitimate 
reasoning; that the truth or falsehood of Christianity be never made 



186 REVERENCING THE DEITY. 

a topic of raillery, a theme for the exercise of wit or eloquence, or a 
subject of contention for literary fame and victory 3 that the cause 
be tried upon its merits ; that all applications to the fancy, passions, 
or prejudices of the reader, all attempts to preoccupy, ensnare or 
perplex his judgment, by any art, influence, or impression whatso- 
ever, extrinsic to the proper grounds and evidence upon which his 
assent ought to proceed, be rejected from a question which involves 
in its determination the hopes, the virtue, and the repose of millions; 
that the controversy be managed on both sides with sincerity; that 
is that nothing be produced, in the writings of either, contrary to or 
beyond the writer's own knowledge and persuasion ; that objections 
and difficulties be proposed, from no other motive than an honest and 
serious desire to obtain satisfaction, or to communicate information 
which may promote the discovery and progress of truth ; that in 
conformity with this design, everything be stated with integrityt with 
method, precision, and simplicity ; and above all, that whatever is 
published in opposition to received and confessedly beneficial per- 
suasions, be set forth under a form which is likely to invite inquiry 
and to meet examination. If with these moderate and equitable con- 
ditions be compared the manner in which hostilities have been 
waged against the Christian religion, not only the votaries of the 
prevailing faith, but every man who looks forward with anxiety to 
the destination of his being, will see much to blame and to complain 
of. By one unbeliever ^ all the follies which have adhered, in a long 
course of dark and superstitious ages, to the popular creed, are as- 
sumed as so many doctrines of Christ and his Apostles, for the pur- 
pose of subverting the whole system by the absurdities which it is 
ihus represented to contain. By another, the ignorance and vices of 
.he sacerdotal order, their mutual dissensions and persecutions, their 
visurpations and encroachments upon the intellectual liberty and civil 
•ights of mankind, have been displayed with no small triumph and 
invective ; not so much to guard the Christian laity against a repe- 
tition of the same injuries (which is the only proper use to be made 
of the most flagrant examples of the past,) as to prepare the way for 
an insinuation, that the religion itself is nothing but a profitable fable, 
imposed upon the fears and credulity of the multitude, and upheld 
by the frauds and influence of an interested and crafty priesthood. 
And yet, how remotely is the character of the clergy connected with 
the truth of Christianity ! What, after all, do the most disgraceful 
pages of ecclesiastical history prove, but that the passions of ou7 
common nature are not altered or excluded by distinctions of name, 
and that the characters of men are formed much more by the tempta- 
tions than the duties of their profession ? A third finds delight in col- 
lecting and repeating accounts of wars and massacres, of tumults 
and insurrections, excited in almost every age of the Christian era 
by religious zeal ; as though the vices of Christians were parts of 
Christianity; intolerance and extirpation precepts of the gospel; or 
as if its spirit could be judged of from the counsels of princes, the 
intrigues of statesmen, the pretences of malice and ambition, or the 



REVERENCING THE DEITY. 187 

unauthorized cruelties of some gloomy and virulent superstition. 
The fourth, the succession and variety of popular religions; the vicis- 
situdes with which sects and tenets have flourished and decayed ; the 
zeal with which they were once supported, the negligence with which 
they are now remembered ; the little share which reason and argu- 
ment appear to have had in framing the creed, or regulating the reli- 
gious conduct of the multitude ; the indifference and submission with 
which the religion of the state is generally received by the common 
people ; the caprice and vehemence with which it is sometimes op- 
posed ; the frenzy with which men have been brought to contend for 
opinions and ceremonies, of which they knew neither the proof, the 
meaning, nor the original : lastly, the equal and undoubting confi- 
dence with which we hear the doctrines of Christ or of Confucius, the 
law of Moses or of Mahomet, the Bible, the Koran, or the Shaster, 
maintained or anathematized, taught or abjured, revered or derided, 
according as we live on this or on that side of a river ; keep within, 
or step over the boundaries of a state ; or even in the same country, 
and by the same people, so often as the event of a battle, or the issue 
of a negotiation, delivers them to the dominion of a new master; — 
points, T say, of this sort are exhibited to the public attention, as so 
many arguments against the truth of the Christian religion ; and with 
success. For these topics being brought together, and set off with 
some aggravation of circumstances, and with a vivacity of style and 
description familiar enough to the writings and conversation of free 
thinkers, insensibly lead the imagination into a habit of classing Chris- 
tianity with the delusions that have taken possession, by turns, of the 
public belief ; and of regarding it as, what the scoffers of our faith 
represent it to be, the superstition of the day. But is this to deal hon- 
estly by the subject, or with the world? May not the same things be 
said, may not the same prejudices be excited by these representations, 
vhether Christianity be true or false, or by whatever proofs its truth 
36 attested '? May not truth as well as falsehood be taken upon credit ? 
IVIay not a religion be founded upon evidence accessible and satis- 
factory to every mind competent to the inquiry, which yet, by the 
greatest part of its professors, is received upon authority 1 

But if the matter of these objections be reprehensible, as calcula- 
ted to produce an effect upon the reader beyond what their real 
weight and place in the argument deserve, still more shall we discover 
of management and disingenuousness in the form under Avhich 
they are dispersed among the public. Infidelity is served up in every 
shape that is likely to allure, surprise, or beguile the imagination : 
in a fable, a tale, a novel, a poem ; in interspersed and broken hints, 
remote and oblique surmises ; in books of travels, of philosophy, of 
natural history ; in a word, in any form rather than the right one, 
that of a professed and regular disquisition. And because the coarse 
buffoonery and broad laugh of the old and rude adversaries of the 
Christian faith would offend the taste, perhaps rather than the virtue, 
of this cultivated age, a graver irony, a more skillful and delicate 
banter i;5 substitute! in their place. An eloquent historian, besides 



188 REVERENCING THE DEITY. 

his more direct, and therefore fairer, attacks upon the credibility ol 
Evangelic story, has contrived to weave into his narration one continu- 
ed sneer upon the cause of Christianity, and upon the writings and 
characters of its ancient patrons. The knowledge which this author 
possesses of the frame and conduct of the human mind must have 
led him to observe, that such attacks do their execution without in- 
quiry. Who can refute a sneer ? Who can compute the number, 
much less, one by one, scrutinize the justice of those disparaging in- 
sinuations which crowd the pages of this elaborate history 1 What 
reader suspends his curiosity, or calls off his attention from the prin- 
cipal narrative, to examine references, to search into the foundation, 
or to weigh the reason, propriety, and force of every transient sarcasm 
and sly allusion, by which the Christian testimony is depreciated and 
traduced ; and by which, nevertheless, he may find his persuasion 
afterwards unsettled and perplexed ? 

But the enemies of Christianity have pursued her with poisoned 
arrows. Obscenity itself is made the vehicle of infidelity. The awful 
doctrines, if we be not permitted to call them the sacred tmths^ of 
our religion, together with all the adjuncts and appendages of its 
w^orship and external profession, have been sometimes impudently 
profaned by an unnatural conjunction with impure and lascivious 
images. The fondness for ridicule is almost universal ; and ridicule 
to many minds is never so irresistible as when seasoned with obsce- 
nity, and employed upon religion. But in proportion as these noxious 
principles take hold of the imagination, they infatuate the judg- 
ment ; for trains of ludicrous and unchaste associations, adhering to 
every sentiment and mention of religion, render the mind indisposed 
to receive either conviction from its evidence, or impressions from its 
authority. And this effect being exerted upon the sensitive part of 
our frame, is altogether independent of argument, proof, or reason : 
is as formidable to a true religion as to a false one , to a well 
grounded faith as to a chimerical mythology, or fabulous tradition. 
Neither, let it be observed, is the crime or danger less, because impure 
ideas are exhibited under a veil, in covert and chastened language. 

Seriousness is not constraint of thought; nor levity, freedom. 
Every mind which wishes the advancement of truth and knowledge, 
in the most important of all human researches, must abhor this li- 
centiousness, as violating no less the laws of reasoning than the 
rights of decency. There is but one description of men, to whose 
principles it ought to be tolerable ; I mean that class of reasoners 
who can see little in Christianity, even supposing it to be true. To 
such adversaries we address this reflection : — Had Jesus Christ de- 
livered no other declaration than the following, " The hour is coming, 
in which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice, and shall 
come forth ;. they that have done good unto the resurrection of life ; 
and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation;'^ 
he had pronounced a message of inestimable importance, and well 
worthy of that splendid apparatus of prophecy and miracles with 
which his mission was introduced and attested : a message, in which 



REVERENCING TIIE DEITY. 189 

the wisest of mankind would rejoice to find an answer to their doubts, 
and rest to their inquiries. It is idle to say, that a future state had 
been discovered already : — it had been discovered, as the Coperni- 
can system was — it was one guess among many. He alone discov- 
ers who proves ; and no man can prove this point but the teachei 
who testifies by miracles that his doctrine comes from God. 



BOOK VI. 



ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF THE ORIGIN OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

GrOVERNMENT, at first, was either patriarchal or military : that oJ 
a parent over his family, or of a commander over his fellow war- 
riors. 

1 . Paternal authority, and the order of domestic life, supplied the 
foundation of civil government. Did mankind spring out of the 
earth mature and independent, it would be found perhaps impossible 
to introduce subjection and subordination among them : but the condi- 
tion of human infancy prepares men for society, by combining indi- 
viduals into small communities, and by placing them from the begin- 
ning under direction and control. A family contains the rudiments 
of an empire. The authority of one over many, and the disposition 
to govern and to be governed, are in this way incidental to the very 
nature, and coeval, no doubt, with the existence, of the human spe- 
cies. 

Moreover, the constitution of families not only assists the forma- 
tion of civil government, by the dispositions which it generates, but 
also furnishes the first steps of the process by which empires have 
been actually reared. A parent w^ould retain a considerable part of 
his authority after his children were grown up, and had formed fami- 
lies of their own. The obedience of which they remembered not the 
beginning, would be considered as natural ] a.nd would scarcely, du- 
ring the parent's life, be entirely or abmptly withdrawn. Here then 
we see the second stage in the progress of dominion. The first was 
that of a parent over his young children ] this, that of an ancestor 
presiding over his adult descendants. 

Although the original progenitor was the centre of union to his 
posterity, yet it is not probable that the association would be imme- 
diately or altogether dissolved by his death. Connected by habits 
of intercourse and affection, and by some common rights, necessities, 
and interests, they would consider themselves as allied to each othei 
in a nearer degree than to the rest of the species. Almost all would 
be sensible of an inclination to continue in the society in which they 



CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 191 

had been brought up ; and experiencing, as they soon would do, 
many inconveniences from the absence of that authority which their 
common ancestor exercised, especially in deciding their disputes, and 
directing their operations in matters in which it was necessary to 
act in conjunction, they might be induced to supply his place by a 
formal choice of a successor ; or rather might willingly, and almost 
imperceptibly, transfer their obedience to some one of the family, 
who by his age or services, or by the part he possessed in the di- 
rection of their affairs during the lifetime of the parent, had already 
taught them to respect his advice, or to attend to his commands : or, 
lastly, the prospect of these inconveniences might prompt the first 
ancestor to appoint a successor; and his posterity, from the same 
motive, united with an habitual deference to the ancestor's authority, 
might receive the appointment with submission. Here then we have 
a tribe or clan incorporated under one chief. Such communities 
might be increased by considerable numbers, and fulfil the purposes 
of civil union, without any other or more regular convention, consti- 
tution, or form of government, than we have described. Every 
branch which was slipped off from the primitive stock, and removed 
to a distance from it, would in like manner take root, and grow into 
a separate clan. Two or three of these clans were frequently, we 
may suppose, united into one. Marriage, conquest, mutual defence, 
common distress, or mere accidental coalitions, might produce this 
effect. 

2. A second source of personal authority, and which might easily 
extend, or sometimes perhaps supersede, the patriarchal, is that 
which results from military arrangement. In wars, either of aggres- 
sion or defence, manifest necessity would prompt those who fought 
on the same side to array themselves under one leader. And although 
their leader was advanced to his eminence for the purpose only, and 
during the operations of a single expedition, yet his authority would 
not always terminate with the reasons for which it was conferred. 
A warrior who had led forth his tribe against their enemies with re- 
peated success would procure to himself, even in the deliberations 
of peace, a powerful and permanent influence. If this advantage 
were added to the authority of the patriarchal chief, or favored by 
any previous distinction of ancestry, it would be no difficult underta* 
king for the person who possessed it to obtain the almost absolute 
direction of the affairs of the community ; especially if he was 
careful to associate to himself proper auxiliaries, and content to 
practise the obvious art of gratifying or removing those who opposed 
his pretensions. 

But, although we may be able to comprehend how, by his perso- 
nal abilities or fortune, one man may obtain the rule over many, yet 
it seems more difficult to explain how empire became hereditary, oi 
in what manner sovereign power, which is never acquired without 
great merit or management, learns to descend in a succession which 
has no dependence upon any qualities either of understanding or 
activity. The causes which have introduced hereditary dominion 



1^2 CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

into so general a reception in the world are principally the following : 
the influence of association, which communicates to the son a portion 
of the same respect which was w^ont to be paid to the virtues or 
station of the father ; the mutual jealousy of other competitors ; the 
greater envy with which all behold the exaltation of an equal, than 
the continuance of an acknowledged superiority ; a reigning prince 
leaving behind him many adherents, who can preserve their own 
importance only by supporting the succession of his children : add 
to these reasons, that elections to the supreme power, having, upon 
trial, produced destructive contentions, many states would take 
refuge from a return of the same calamities in a rule of succession ; 
and no rule presents itself so obvious, certain, and intelligible, as 
consanguinity of birth. 

The ancient state of society in most countries, and the modern 
condition of some uncivilized parts of the world, exhibit that appear- 
ance v/hich this account of the origin of civil government would 
lead us to expect. The earliest histories of Palestine, Greece, Italy, 
Gaul, Britain, inform us, that these countries were occupied by many 
small independent nations, not much perhaps unlike those which 
are found at present among the savage inhabitants of North America, 
and upon the coast of Africa. Those nations I consider as the 
amplifications of so many single families ] or as derived from the 
iunction of two or three families, whom society in war, or the 
approach of some common danger had united. Suppose a country to 
have been first peopled by shipwreck on its coasts, or by emigrants 
or exiles from a neighboring country ] the new settlers, having no 
enemy to provide against, and occupied with the care of their perso- 
nal subsistence, would think little of digesting a system of laws, of 
contriving a form of government, or indeed of any political union 
whatever; but each settler would remain at the head of his own 
family, and each family would include all of every age and genera- 
tion who were descended from him. So many of these families as 
were holden together after the death of the original ancestor, by the 
reasons and in the method above recited, would wax, as the indi- 
viduals were multiplied, into tribes, clans, hordes, or nations, similar 
to those into which the ancient inhabitants of many countries are 
known to have been divided, and which are still found wherever the 
state of society and manners is immature and uncultivated. 

Nor need we be surprised at the early existence in the world of 
some vast empires, or at the rapidity with w^hich they advanced to 
their greatness from comparatively small and obscure originals. 
While the inhabitants of so many countries were broken into nu- 
merous communities, unconnected, and oftentimes contending with 
each other ) before experience had taught these little states to see 
their own danger in their neighbor's ruin ] or had instructed them in 
the necessity of resisting the aggrandizement of an aspiring power, 
by alliances and tim^ely preparations ] in this condition of civil poli- 
cy, a particular tribe, which by any means had gotten the start of 
^he rest in strength or discipline, and happened to fall under the 



SUBJECTION TO CIVIL. GOVERNMENT. 193 

conduct of an ambitious chief, by directing their first attempts to the 
part where success was most secure, and by promising, as they went 
along, to those whom they conquered, a share in their future enter- 
prises, might soon gather a force which would infallibly overbear 
any opposition that the scattered power and unprovided state of such 
enemies could make to the progress of their victories. 

Lastly, our theory affords a presumption that the earliest govern- 
ments were monarchies, because the government of families, and of 
armies, from which, according to our account, civil government de- 
rived its institution, and probably its form, is universally monar- 
chical. 



CHAPTER II. 

HOW SUBJECTION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT IS MAINTAINED. 

Could we view our own species from a distance, or regard 
mankind with the same sort of observation with which we read the 
natural history, or remark the manners of any other animal, there is 
nothing in the human character which would more surprise us, than 
the almost universal subjugation of strength to weakness ; than to 
see many millions of robust men, in the complete use and exercise 
of their personal faculties, and without any defect of courage, waiting 
upon the will of a child, a woman, a driveller, or a lunatic. And 
although, when we suppose a vast empire in absolute subjection to 
one person, and that one depressed beneath the level of his species by 
infirmities or vice, we suppose perhaps an extreme case ; yet in all 
cases, even in the most popular forms of civil government, the physi- 
cal strength resides in the governed. In what manner opinion thus 
prevails over strength, or how power, which naturally belongs to su- 
perior force, is maintained in opposition to it 5 in other words, by 
what motives the many are induced to submit to the few, becomes 
an inquiry which lies at the root of almost every political specula- 
tion. It removes, indeed, but does not resolve, the difiiculty, to say 
that civil governments are nowadays almost universally upholden 
by standing armies ; for the question still returns, How are these 
armies themselves kept in subjection, or made to obey the commands, 
and carry on the designs of the prince or state which employs them '? 

Now, although we should look in vain for any single reason 
which will account for the general submission of mankind to civil 
government, yet it may not be difficult to assign for every class and 
character in the community, considerations powerful enough to 
dissuade each from any attempts to resist established authority. 
Every man has his motive, though not the same. In this, as in 
other instances, the conduct is similar, but the principles which pro- 
duce it, extremely various. 

There are three distinctions of character into which the subjects 
of a state may be divided: into those who obey from prejudice; 

1 



194 SUBJECTION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

those who obey from reason ] and those who obey from self int^ 
rest. 

1. They who obey from prejudice^ are determined by an opinion of 
right in their governors 3 which opinion is founded upon pre- 
scription. In monarchies and aristocracies which are hereditary, the 
prescription operates in favor of particular families; in republics and 
elective offices, in favor of particular forms of government, or consti- 
tutions. Nor is it to be wondered at, that mankind sbould reve- 
rence authority founded in prescription, when they observe that it is 
prescription which confers the title to almost every thing else. The 
whole course, and all the habits of civil life, favor this prejudice. 
Upon what other foundation stands any man's right to his estate ? 
The right of primogeniture, the succession of kindred, the descent of 
property, the inheritance of honors, the demand of tithes, tolls, rents, 
or services, from the estates of others, the right of way and powers 
of office and magistracy, the privileges of nobility, the immunities of 
the clergy — upon what are they all founded, in the apprehension at 
least of the multitude, but upon prescription ? To what else, when 
the claims are contested, is the appeal made "l It is natural to transfer 
the same principle to the affairs of government, and to regard those 
exertions of power which have been long exercised and acquiesced 
in, as so many rights in the sovereign ] and to consider obedience to 
his commands, within certain accustomed limits, as enjoined by that 
rule of conscience, which requires us to render to every man his 
due. 

In hereditary monarchies, the prescriptive title is corroborated, and 
its influence considerably augmented, by an accession of religious 
sentiments, and by that sacredness which men are wont to ascribe to 
the persons of princes. Princes themselves have not failed to take 
advantage of this disposition, by claiming a superior dignity, as it 
were, of nature, or a peculiar delegation from the Supreme Being. 
For this purpose were introduced the titles of Sacred Majesty, of God's 
Anointed, Representative, Vicegerent, together with the ceremonies 
of investitures and coronations, which are calculated not so much 
to recognizethe authority of sovereigns as to consecrate their persons. 
Where a fabulous religion permitted it, the public veneration has 
been challenged by bolder pretensions. The Roman emperors 
usurped the titles and arrogated the worship of gods. The mytholo- 
gy of the heroic ages, and of many barbarous nations, was easily 
converted to this purpose. Some princes, like the heroes of Homer, 
and the founder of the Roman name, derived their birth from the 
gods ] others, with Numa, pretended a secret communication with 
some divine being ; and others, again, like the Incas of Peru, and the 
ancient Saxon kings, extracted their descent from the deities of their 
country. The Lama of Thibet, at this day, is held forth to his 
subjects, not as the offspring or successor of a divine race of princes, 
but as the immortal God himself, the object at once of civil obedi- 
ence and religious adoration. This instance is singular, and may be 
accounted the furthest point to which the abuse of human credu- 



SUBJECTION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 195 

lity has ever been carried. But in all these instances the purpose 
was the same, to engage the reverence of mankind^ by an applica- 
tion to their religious principles. 

The reader will be careful to observe, that in this article we de- 
nominate every opinion, whether true or false, a prejudice^ which is 
not founded upon argument, in the mind of the person who enter- 
tains it. 

2. They who obey from reason, that is to say, from conscience as 
instructed by reasonings and conclusions of their own, are deter- 
mined by the consideration of the necessity of some government or 
other ; the certain mischief of civil commotions ; and the danger of 
resettling the government of their country better, or at all, if once 
subverted or disturbed. 

3. They who obey from self interest are kept in order by want of 
leisure; by a succession of private cares, pleasures, and engagements ; 
by contentment, or a sense of the ease, plenty, and safety, which 
they enjoy; or lastly, and principally, by fear, foreseeing that they 
would bring themselves by resistance into a worse situation than 
their present, inasmuch as the strength of government, each discon- 
tented subject reflects, is greater than his own, and he knows not 
that others would join him. 

This last consideration has often been called opinion of power. 

This account of the principles by which mankind are retained in 
their obedience to the civil government, may suggest the following 
cautions: 

1. Let civil governors learn hence to respect their subjects; let 
them be admonished, that the physical strength resides in the governed; 
that this strength wants only to be felt and roused, to lay prostrate 
the most ancient and confirmed dominion ; that civil authority is 
founded in opinion ; that general opinion therefore ought always to 
be treated with deference, and managed with delicacy and circumspec- 
tion. 

2. Opinion of rights always following the custom, being for the 
most part founded in nothing else, and lending one principal support 
to government ; every innovation in the constitution, or, in other 
words, in the custom of governing, diminishes the stability of govern- 
ment. Hence some absurdities are to be retained, and many small 
inconveniences endured in every country, rather than that the usage 
should b^ violated, or the course of public affairs diverted from 
their old and smooth channel. Even names are not indifferent. 
When the multitude are to be dealt with, there is a charm in sounds. 
It was upon this principle that several statesmen of those times ad 
vised Cromwell to assume the title of king, together with the ancient 
style and insignia of royalty. The minds of many, they contended, 
would be brought to acquiesce in the authority of a king, who sus- 
pected the office, and were offended with the administration, of a 
protector. Novelty reminded them of usurpation. The adversa- 
ries of this design opposed the measure, from the same persua- 
sion of the efficacy of names and forms, jealous lest the veneration 



196 SUBJECTION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

paid to these should add an influence to the new settlement, which 
might ensnare the liberty of the commonwealth. 

3. Government may be too secure. The greatest tyrants have been 
those whose titles were the most unquestioned. Whenever therefore 
the opinion of right becomes too predominant and superstitious, it is 
abated by breaking the custom. Thus the Revolution broke the 
custom of succession, and thereby moderated, both in the prince and 
in the people, those lofty notions of hereditary right, which in the 
one were become a continual incentive to tyranny, and disposed the 
other to invite servitude, by undue compliances and dangerous 
concessions. 

4. As ignorance of union, and want of communication, appeal 
among the principal preseiTatives of civil authority, it behooves every 
state to keep its subjects in this want and ignorance, not only by 
vigilance and guarding against actual confederacies and combina- 
tions, but by a timely care to prevent great collections of men of 
any separate party of religion, or of hke occupation or profession, 
or in any way connected by a participation of interest or passion, 
from being assembled in the same vicinity. A Protestant establish- 
ment in this country may have little to fear from its popish subjects, 
scattered as they are throughout the kingdom, and intermixed with 
the Protestant inhabitants, which yet might think them a formidable 
body if they were gathered together into one county. The most fre- 
quent and desperate riots are those which break out among men of 
the same prof ession, as w^eavers, miners, sailors. This circumstance 
makes a mutiny of soldiers more to be dreaded than any other insur- 
rection. Hence also one danger of an overgrown metropolis, and of 
those great cities and crowded districts into which the inhabitants of 
trading countries are commonly collected. The w^orst effect of popu- 
lar tumults consists in this, that they discover to the insurgents the se- 
cret of their own strength, teach them to depend upon it against a future 
occasion, and both produce and diffuse sentiments of confidence in 
one another, and assurances of mutual support. Leagues thus 
formed and strengthened may overawe or overset the power of any 
state ; and the danger is greater, in proportion as, from the propin- 
quity of habitation and intercourse of employment, the passions and 
counsels of a party can be circulated with ease and rapidity. It is 
by these means, and in such situations, that the minds of men are so 
affected and prepared, that the most dreadful uproars often arise from 
the slightest provocations. When the train is laid, a spark will 
produce the explosion. 



SUBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 197 

CHAPTER III. 

THE DUTY OF SUBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT EXPLAINED, 

The subject of this chapter is sufficiently distinguished from the 
subject of the last, as the motives which actually produce civil obe- 
dience may be, and often are, very different from the reasons which 
make that obedience a duty. 

In Older to prove civil obedience to be a moral duty, and an obliga 
tion upon the conscience, it hath been usual with many political 
writers (at the head of whom we find the venerable name of Locke) 
to state a compact between the citizen and the state as the ground 
and cause of the relation between them ; which compact, binding th^ 
parties for the same general reason that private contracts do, resolves 
the duty of submission to -civil government into the universal obliga- 
tion of fidelity in the performance of promises. This compact^ is 
twofold : — 

First. An express compact by the primitive founders of the state, 
who are supposed to have convened for the declared purpose of set- 
tling the terms of their political union, and a future constitution of 
government. The whole body is supposed, in the first place, to have 
unanimously consented to be bound by the resolutions of the majority ; 
that majority, in the next place, to have fixed certain fundamental 
regulations ] and then to have constituted, either in one person, or in 
an assembly (the rule of succession, or appointment, being at the 
same time determined.) a standing legislature^ to whom, under these 
pre-established restrictions, the government of the state was thence- 
forward committed, and whose laws the several members of the con 
vention were, by their first undertaking, thus personally engaged to 
obey. This transaction is sometimes called the social compact^ and 
these supposed original regulations compose what are meant by the 
constitution^ the fundamental laws of the constitution^ and form, on 
one side, the inherent indefeasible prerogative of the croivn ; and, on 
the other, ttie unalienable, imprescriptible birthright of the subject. 

Secondly. A tacit or implied compact, by all succeeding members of 
the state, who, by accepting its protection, consent to be bound by 
its laws ; in like manner as, whoever voluntarily enters into a private 
society is understood, without any other or more explicit stipulation, 
to promise a conformity with the rules, and obedience to the govern- 
ment of that society, as the known conditions upon which he is ad- 
mitted to a participation of its privileges. 

This account of the subject, although specious, and patronized by 
names the most respectable, appears to labor under the following ob- 
jections ; that it is founded upon a supposition false in fact, and lead- 
ing to dangerous conclusions. 

No social compact, similar to what is here described, was ever made 
or entered into in reality ; no such original convention of the people 
was ever actually holden. or in any country could be holden, 



198 SUBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

antecedent to the existence of civil government in that country. It 
is to suppose it possible to call savages out of caves and deserts, to 
celiberate and vote upon topics which the experience, and studies, 
And refinements of civil life alone suggest. Therefore no govern- 
ment in the universe began from this original. Some imitation of a 
social compact may have taken place at a revolutiofi. The present 
age has been witness to a transaction which bears the nearest resem- 
blance to this political idea of any of which history has preserved 
the account or memory : I refer to the establishment of the United 
States of North America. We saw the people assembled to elect depu- 
ties, for the avowed purpose of framing the constitution of a new 
empire. We saw this deputation of the people deliberating and re- 
solving upon a form of government, erecting a permanent legislature, 
distributing the functions of sovereignty, establishing and promul- 
gating a code of fundamental ordinances, which were to be considered 
by succeeding generations not merely as laws and acts of the state, 
but as the very terms and conditions of the confederation ; as bind- 
ing not only upon the subjects and magistrates of the state, but as 
limitations of power, which were to control and regulate the future 
legislature. Yet even here much was presupposed. In settling 
the constitution, many important parts vx^ere presumed to be already 
settled. The qualifications of the constituents who were admitted to 
vote in the election of members of Congress, as well as the mode of 
electing the representatives, were taken from the old forms of govern- 
ment. That was wanting, from which every social union should 
set oflf, and which alone makes the resolution of the society the act 
of the individual, — the unconstrained consent of all to be bound by 
the decision of the majority; and yet, without this previous consent, 
the revolt, and the regulations which followed it, were compulsory 
upon dissentients. 

But the original compact, we are told, is not proposed as 3. fact, but 
as a fiction, which furnishes a commodious explication of the mutual 
rights and duties of sovereigns and subjects. In answer to this rep- 
resentation of the matter, we observe, that the original compact, if it 
be not a fact, is nothing ; can confer no actual authority upon laws of 
magistrates ; nor afford any foundation to rights which are supposed 
to be real and existing. But the truth is, that in the books, and in 
the apprehension of those who deduce our civil rights and obliga- 
tions a padis, the original convention is appealed to and treated of as 
a reality. Whenever the disciples of this system speak of the con- 
stitution ; of the fundamental articles of the constitution ; of laws 
being constitutional or unconstitutional; or inherent, unalienable, in- 
extinguishable rights, either in the prince or in the people ; or indeed 
of any laws, usages, or civil rights, as transcending the authority of 
the subsisting legislature, or possessing a force and sanction superior 
to what belong to the modern acts and edicts of the legislature ; they 
secretly refer us to what passed at the original convention. They 
would teach us to believe that certain rules and ordinances were 
established by the people, at the same time that they settled the 



JSCJBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT 199 

charter of governmentj and the powers as well as the form of the 
future legislature ; that this legislature consequently, deriving its 
commission and existence from the consent and acc of the primitive 
assembly (of which indeed it is only the standing deputation,) con- 
tinues subject, in the exercise of its offices, and as to the extent of its 
power, to the rules, reservations, and limitations which the same as- 
sembly then made and prescribed to it. 

'• As the first members of the state were bound by express stipula- 
tion to obey the government which they had erected, so the succeed- 
ing inhabitants of the same countr}' are understood to promise alle- 
giance to the constitution and government they find established, by 
accepting its protection, claiming its privileges, and acquiescing in its 
laws ; more especially by the purchase or inheritance of lands, to the 
possession of which allegiance to the state is annexed, as the very 
service and condition of the tenure." Smoothly as this train of argu- 
ment proceeds, little of it will endure examination. The native sub- 
jects of modern states are not conscious of any stipulation with the 
sovereigns, of ever exercising an election whether they will be bound 
or not by the acts of the legislature, of any alternative being propo^^d 
to their choice, of a promise either required or given : nor do thcv 
apprehend that the validity or authority of the laws depends at ail 
upon tkeir recognition or consent. In all stipulations, whether they 
be expressed or implied, private or public, formal or constructive, the 
parties stipulating must both possess the liberty of assent and refusal 
and also be conscious of this liberty ; which cannot with truth be 
affirmed of the subjects of civil government, as government is now, or 
ever was, actually administered. This is a defect which no argu- 
ments can excuse or supply : all presumptions of consent, without 
this consciousness, or in opposition to it, are vain and erroneous. 
Still less is it possible to reconcile with any idea of stipulation the 
practice, in which all European nations agree, of founding allegiance 
upon the circumstance of nativity, that is, of claiming and treating 
as subjects all those who are born within the confines of their do- 
minions, although removed to another country in their youth or in- 
fancy. In this instance, certainly, the state does not presume a com- 
pact. A.lso, if the subject be bound only by his own consent, and if 
the voluntary binding in the country be the proof and intimation of 
that consent, by what arguments should we defend the right, which 
sovereigns universally assum^e, of prohibiting, when they please, the 
departure of their subjects out of the realm '? 

Again, when it is contended that the taking and holding possession 
of land amounts to an acknowledgment of the sovereign, and a virtual 
promise of allegiance to his laws, it is necessary, to the validity of 
the argument, to prove that the inhabitants who first composed and 
constituted the state collectively possessed a right to the soil of the 
country ; — a right to parcel it out to whom they pleased, a ad to annex 
to the donation what conditions they thought fit. How came they 
by this right ? An agreement among themselves would not confer 
it : that could only adjust what already belonged to them. A society 



200 SUBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

of men vote themselves to be the ovrners of a region of the world :— 
does that vote, unaccompanied especially vrith any culture, enclosure, 
or proper act of occupation, make it theirs 1 does it entitle them to 
exclude others from it, or to dictate the conditions upon which it shall 
be enjoyed ? Yet this original collective right and ownership is the 
foundation for all the reasoning by which the duty of allegiance is 
inferred from the possession of land. 

The theory of government which affirms the existence and the 
obUgation of a social compact, would, after all, merit little discussion, 
and, however groundless and unnecessary, should receive no opposi- 
tion from us, did it not appear to lead to conclusions unfavorable to 
the improvement and to the peace of human society. 

1st. Upon the supposition that government was first erected by, 
and that it derives all its just authority from resolutions entered into 
by a convention of the people, it is capable of being presumed that 
many points were settled by that convention anterior to the establish- 
ment of the subsisting legislature, and which the legislature, conse- 
quently, has no right to alter or interfere with. These points are 
called the fundamentals of the constitution, and as it is impossible to 
determine how many, or what they are, the suggesting of any such 
serves extremely to embarrass the deliberations of the legislature, and 
affords a dangerous pretence for disputing the authority of the laws. 
It was this sort of reasoning (so far as reasoning of any kind was em- 
ployed in the question) that prc^iuced in this nation the doubt which 
so much agitated the minds of mea in the reign of the second Charles, 
whether an act of parliament could of right alter or limit the succes- 
sion of the crown ? 

2dly. If it be by virtue of a compact that the subject owes obedience 
to civil government, it will follow that he ought to abide by the form 
of government which he finds established, be it ever so absurd or in- 
convenient. He is bound by his bargain. It is not permitted to any 
man to retreat from his engagement, merely because he finds the per 
formance disadvantageous, or because he has an opportunity of enter 
ing into a better. This law of contracts is universal ] and to call the 
relation between the sovereign and the subjects a contract, yet not to 
apply to it the rules, or allow of the effects of a contract, is an arbi- 
trary use of names, and an unsteadiness in reasoning which can teach 
nothing. Resistance to the encroachments of the supreme magistrate 
may be justified upon this principle ; recourse to arms, for the pur- 
pose of bringing about an amendment of the constitution, never can. 
No form of government contains a provision for its own dissolution j 
and few governors will consent to the extinction, or even to any 
abridgment of their own power. It does not therefore appear how 
despotic governments can ever, in consistency with the obligation of 
the subject, be changed or mitigated. Despotism is the constitution 
of many states, and while a despotic prince exacts from his subjects 
the most rigorous servitude, according to this account, he is only hold- 
ing them to their agreement. A people may vindicate, by force, the 
rights which the constitution has left them; but every attempt to 



SUBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 201 

narrow the prerogative of the crown by new limitations, and in op- 
position to the will of the reigning prince, whatever opportunities 
may invite, or success follow it, must be condemned as an infraction 
of the compact between the sovereign and the subject. 

3dly. Every violation of the compact on the part of the governor 
releases the subject from his allegiance, and dissolves the government. 
I do not perceive how we can avoid this consequence, if we found the 
duty of allegiance upon compact, and confess any analogy between 
the social compact and other contracts. In private contracts, the 
violation and non- performance of the conditions, by one of the parties, 
vacates the obligation of the other. Now the terms and articles of 
the social compact being nowhere extant or expressed, the rights and 
offices of the administrator of an empire being so many and various; 
the imaginary and controverted line of his prerogative being so liable 
to be overstepped in one part or other of it ; the position, that every 
such transgression amounts to a forfeiture of the government, and 
consequently authorizes the people to withdraw their obedience, and 
provide for themselves by a new settlement, would endanger the sta- 
bility of every political fabric in the world, and has in fact always 
supplied the disaffected with a topic of seditious declamation. If oc- 
casions had arisen in which this plea has been resorted to with justice 
and success, they have been occasions in which a revolution was de- 
fensible upon other and plainer principles. The plea itself is at all 
times captious and unsafe. 



Wherefore, rejecting the intervention of a compact, as unfounded 
in its principle, and dangerous in the application, we assign for the 
only ground of the subject's obligation, The will of God as col- 
lected FROM EXPEDIENCY. 

The steps by which the argument proceeds are few and direct. 
"It is the will of God that the happiness of human, life be pro- 
moted :" — this is the first step, and the foundation not wly of -this, 
but of every moral conclusion. " Civil society conduces to that end :" 
this is the second proposition. "Civil societies cannot be-ntp* 
holden, unless, in each, the interest of the whole society be binding, 
upon every part and member of it :" — this is the third step, and con- ' 
ducts us to the conclusion, namely, "that so long as the interest of 
the whole society requires it, that is so long as the established govern-"- 
ment cannot be resisted or changed without public inconveniency, it 
is the will of God (which will universally determines our duty) that 
the established government be obeyed," — and no longer. 

This principle being admitted, the justice of every particular/case 
of resistance is reduced to a computation of the quantity of the danger 
and grievance on the one side, and of the probability and expense of 
redressing it on the other. 

But who shall judge this ? we answer, " Every man for himself." 
In contentions between the sovereign and the subject, the parties ac- 

I 2 



202 SUBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

knowledge no common arbitrator; and it would be absurd to refet 
the decision to those whose conduct has provoked the question, and 
whose own interest, authority, and fate are immediately concerned in 
it. The danger of error and abuse is no objection to the rule of ex- 
pediency, because every other rule is liable to the same or greater : 
and every rule that can be propounded upon the subject (like all rules 
indeed which appeal to, or bind, the conscience) must in the applica- 
tion depend upon private judgment. It may be observed, however, 
that it ought equally to be accounted the exercise of a man's own 
private judgment whether he be determined by reasonings and con- 
clusions of his own, or submit to be directed by the advice of others, 
provided he be free to choose his guide. 

We proceed to point out some easy but important inferences, which 
result from the substitution of public expediency into the place of all 
implied compacts, promises, or conventions whatsoever. 

1 . It may be as much a duty, at one time, to resist government, as 
it is at another to obey it ; to wit, whenever more advantage will, in 
our opinion, accrue to the community from resistance, than mis- 
chief. 

2. The lawfulness of resistance, or the lawfulness of a revolt, does 
not depend alone upon the grievance which is sustained or feared, 
but also upon the probable expense and event of the contest. They 
who concerted the Revolution in England were justifiable in their 
counsels, because, from the apparent disposition of the nation, and 
the strength and character of the parties engaged, the measure was 
likely to be brought about with little mischief or bloodshed ; whereas 
it might have been a question with many friends of their country, 
whether the injuries then endured and threatened would have autho- 
rized the renewal of a doubtful civil war. 

3. Irregularity in the first foundation of a state, or subsequent vio- 
lence, fraud, or injustice in getting possession of the supreme power, 
are not sufficient reasons for resistance, after the government is once 
peaceably settled. No subject of the British empire conceives him- 
self engaged to vindicate the justice of the Norman claim or conquest, 
or apprehends that his duty in any manner depends upon that con- 
troversy. So, likewise, if the house of Lancaster, or even the pos- 
terity of Cromwell, had been at this day seated upon the throne of 
England, we should have been as little concerned to inquire how the 
founder of the family came there. No civil contests are so futile, al- 
though none have been so furious and sanguinary, as those which are 
excited by a disputed succession. 

4. Not every invasion of the subject's rights or liberty, or of the 
constitution ; not every breach of promise, or of oath • not every 
stretch of prerogative, abuse of power or neglect of duty by the chief 
magistrate, or by the whole or any branch of the legislative body, 
justifies resistance,, unless these crimes draw after them public conse- 
quences of sufficient magnitude to outweigh the evils of civil dis- 
turbance. Nevertheless, every violation of the constitution ought to 
be watched with jealousy, and resented as such, beyond what tb<* 



SUBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 203 

quantity of estimable damage would require or warrant; because a 
known and settled usage of governing affords the only security against 
the enormities of uncontrolled dominion, and because this security is 
weakened by every encroachment which is made without opposition, 
or opposed without effect. 

!^. No usage, law, or authority whatever, is so binding that it need 
or ought to be continued, when it may be changed with advantage to 
the community. The family of the prince, the order of succession, 
the prerogative of the crown, the form and parts of the legislature, 
together with the respective powers, office, duration, and mutual de- 
pendency of the several parts, are all only so many laws^ mutable like 
other laws whenever expediency requires, either by the ordinary act 
of the legislature, or, if the occasion deserve it, by the interposition 
of the people. These points are wont to be approached with a kind 
of awe ] they are represented to the mind as principles of the constitu- 
tion settled by our ancestors, and, being settled, to be no more com- 
mitted to innovation or debate ; as foundations never to be stirred ; 
as the terms and conditions of the social compact, to which every 
citizen of the state has engaged his fidelity, by virtue of a promise 
which he cannot now recall. Such reasons have no place in our 
system : to us, if there be any good reason for treating these with 
more deference and respect than other laws, it is either the advantage 
of the present constitution of government (v%^hich reason must be of 
different force in different countries,) or because in all countries it is 
of importance that the form and usage of government be acknow- 
ledged and understood, as well by the governors as by the governed : 
and because, the seldomer it is changed, the more perfectly it will be 
known by both sides. 

6. As all civil obligation is resolved into expediency, what, it may 
be asked, is the difference between the obligation of an Englishman 
and a Frenchman ? or why, since the obligation of both appears to 
be founded in the same reason, is a Frenchman bound in conscience 
to bear anything from his king which an Englishman would not be 
bound to bear ? Their conditions may differ, but then rights, accord- 
ing to this account, should seem to be equal ; and yet we are accus- 
tomed to speak of the rights as well as of the happiness of a free 
people, compared with what belong to the subjects of absolute mo- 
narchies : how, you will say, can this comparison be explained, unless 
we refer to a difference in the compacts by which they are respective- 
ly bound ? • This is a fair question, and the answer to it will afford 
a farther illustration of our principles. We admit, then, that there 
are many things which a Frenchman is bound in conscience, as well 
as by coercion, to endure at the hands of his prince, to which an 
Englishman would not be obliged to submit : but we assert, that it is 
for these two reasons alone; first, because the same act of the prince 
is not the same grievance, where it is agreeable to the constitution, 
as where it infringes it; secondly, because redress in the two cases is 
not equally attainable. Resistance cannot be attempted with equal 
hopes of success, or with the same prospect of receiving support from 



204 SUBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 

Others, wliere the people are reconciled to their suiferings, as vrhere 
they are alarmed by innovation. In this way, and no otherwise, the 
subjects of different states possess different civil rights ; the duty of 
obedience is defined by different boundaries * and the point of justifia- 
ble resistance placed at different parts of the scale of suffering : all 
which is sufficiently intelligible without a social compact. 

7. "The interest of the whole society is binding upon every part 
of it." No rule, short of this, wall provide for the stability of civil 
government, or for the peace and safety of social life. Wherefore, 
as individual members of the state are not permitted to pursue their 
private emolument to the prejudice of the community, so is it equally 
a consequence of this rule, that no particular colony, province, town, 
or district can justly concert measures for their separate interest, 
which shall appear at the same time to diminish the sum of public 
prosperity. I do not mean that it is necessary to the justice of a 
measure, that it profit each and every part of the community (for, as 
the happiness of the whole may be increased, while that of some 
parts is diminished, it is possible that the conduct of one part of an 
empire may be detrimental to some other part, and yet just, provided 
one part gain more in happiness than the other part loses, so that the 
common weal be augmented by the change :) but what I affirm is, 
that those counsels can never be reconciled with the obligations re- 
sulting from civil union, which cause the whole happiness of society 
to be impaired for the conveniency of a part. This conclusion is ap- 
plicable to the question of right between Great Britain and her re- 
volted colonies. Had I been an American, I should not have thought 
it enough to have had it even demonstrated that a separation from 
the parent state would produce effects beneficial to America * my re- 
lation to that state imposed upon me a farther inquiry, namely, 
whether the whole happiness of the empire was likely to be promoted 
by such a measure ? not indeed the happiness of every part ; that was 
not necessary, nor to be expected ;--but whether what Great Britain 
would lose by the separation was likely to be compensated to the joint 
stock of happiness, by the advantages which America would receive 
from it ? The contested claims of sovereign states and their remote 
dependencies may be submitted to the adjudication of this rule wnth 
mutual safety. A public advantage is measured by the advantage 
which each individual receives, and by the number of those who re- 
ceive it. A public evil is compounded of the same proportions. 
While, therefore, a colony is small, or a province thinly inhabited, if 
a competition of interests arise between the original countr}" and their 
acquired dominions, the former ought to be preferred ; because it is 
fit that, if one must necessarily be sacrificed, the less give place to 
the greater : but when, by an increase of population, the interest of 
the provinces begins to bear a considerable proportion to the entire 
interests of the community, it is possible that they may suffer so much 
by their subjection, that not only theirs, but the whole happiness oi 
the empire may be obstructed by their union. The rule and principle 
of the calculation being still the same, the result is different ; and this 



DUTY OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE. 205 

difference begets a new situation, which entitles the subordinate parts 
of the state to more equal terms of confederation, ana, if these be re- 
fused, to independency. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE DUTY OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE, AS STATED IN THE CHRISTIAN 
SCRIPTURES. 

We affirm that, as to the extent of our civil rights and obligations, 
Christianity hath left us where she found us ] that she hath neither 
altered nor ascertained it; that the New Testament contains not one 
passage which, fairly interpreted, affords either argument or objec- 
tion applicable to any conclusions upon the subject that are deduced 
from the law and religion ot nature. 

The only passages which have been seriously alleged in the con- 
troversy, or which it is necessary for us to state and examine, are the 
two following : the one extracted from St. Paul's Epistle to the 
Romans, the other from the first General Epistle of St. Peter : 

" Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers : for there is no 
power but of God : the powers that be are ordained of God. Who- 
soever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God ] 
and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers 
are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not 
be afraid of the power 1 Do that which is good, and thou shalt have 
praise of the same : for he is the minister of God to thee for good. 
But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the 
sword in vain ; for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute 
wrath upon him that doeth evil. Wherefore ye must needs be sub- 
ject, not only for w^ath, but also for conscience' sake. For, for this 
cause pay ye tribute also : for they are God's ministers, attending 
continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues : 
tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to whom custom, fear to whom 
fear, honor to whom honor." Rom. xiii. 1 — 7. 

" Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake ; 
whether it be to the king, as supreme ; or unto governors, as unto 
them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil-doers, and for 
the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with 
well-doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men : as 
free, and not using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, but as 
the servants of God." 1 Pet. ii. 13—18. 

To comprehend the proper import of these instructions, let the reader 
reflect that upon the subject of civil obedience there are two ques- 
tions : the first, whether to obey government be a moral duty and 
obligation upon the conscience at all ? the second, how far, and to 
what cases, that obedience ought to extend ] that these two questions 



206 DUTY OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE. 

are so distinguishable in the imagination, that it is possible to treat 
of the one without any thought of the other: and lastly, that if ex- 
pressions which relate to one of these questions be transferred and 
applied to the other, it is with great danger of giving them a significa- 
tion very different from the author's meaning. This distinction is 
not only possible, but natural. If I met with a person who appeared 
to entertain doubts whether civil obedience were a moral duty whicli 
ought to be voluntarily discharged, or whether it were not a mere 
submission to force, like that which we yield to a robber w^ho holds 
a pistol to our breast, I should represent to him the use and offices of 
civil government, the end and the necessity of civil subjection ; or if 
I preferred a different theory, I should explain to him the social com- 
pact, urge him with the obligation and the equity of his implied 
promise and tacit consent to be governed by the laws of the state from 
which he received protection : or 1 should argue, perhaps, that Nature 
herself dictated the law of subordination, when she planted within 
us an inclination to associate with our species, and framed us with 
capacities so various and unequal. From whatever principle I set 
out, I should labor to infer from it this conclusion : '' That obedience 
to the state is to be numbered among the relative duties of human life, 
for the transgression of which v/e shall be accountable at the tribunal 
of Divine Justice, w^hether the magistrate be able to punish us for it 
or not ;" and being arrived at this conclusion, I should stop, having 
delivered the conclusion itself, and throughout the whole argument 
expressed the obedience which I inculcated, in the most general and 
unquahfied terms ] all resei-vations and restrictions being superfluous, 
and foreign to the doubts I was employed to remove. 

If, in a short time afterward, I should be accosted by the same 
person, with complaints of public grievances, of exorbitant taxes, of 
acts of cruelty and oppression, of tyrannical encroachments upon the 
ancient or stipulated rights of the people, and should be consulted 
whether it were lawful to revolt, or justifiable to join in an attempt 
to shake off the yoke by open resistance ; I should certainly consider 
myself as having a case and question before me very different from 
the former. I should now define and discriminate. I should reply, 
that if public expediency be the foundation, it is also the measure of 
civil obedience ] that the obligation of subjects and sovereigns is 
reciprocal; that the duty of allegiance, whether it be founded in 
utility or compact, is neither unlimited nor unconditional ; that peace 
may be purchased too dearly ; that patience becomes culpable pusil- 
lanimity, when it serves only to encourage our rulers to increase the 
weight of our burden, or to bind it the faster : that the submission 
w^hich surrenders the liberty of a nation, and entails slavery upon 
future generations, is enjoined by no law of rational morality ; finally, 
I should instruct the inquirer to compare the peril and expense of his 
enterprise with the effects it was expected to produce, and to make 
choice of the alternative by which not his own present relief or profit, 
but the whole and permanent interest ot the state was likely to be 
Dest promoted. If any one who had been present at both these con 



DUTY OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE. 207 

/ersations should upbraid me with change and inconsistency of 
opinion, should retort upon me the passive doctrine which I before 
Kiught, the large and absolute terms in which I then delivered lessons 
of obedience and submission, I should account myself unfairly dealt 
ivith. I should reply, that the only difference which the language of 
*he two conversations presented was, that I added now many excep- 
tions and limitations which were omitted or unthought of then : that 
this difference arose naturally from the two occasions, such excep- 
tions being as necessary to the subject of our present conference, as 
*hey would have been superfluous and unseasonable in the former. 

Now the difference in these two conversations is precisely the dis- 
tinction to be taken in interpreting those passages of Scripture, con- 
cerning which we are debating. They inculcate the duty, they do 
not describe the extent of it. They enforce the obligation by the 
proper sanctions of Christianity, without intending either to enlarge 
or contract, without considering, indeed, the limits by which it is 
bounded. This is also the method in which the same apostles enjoin 
the duty of servants to their masters, of children to their parents, of 
wives to their husbands : " Servants, be subject to your masters." 
'' Children, obey your parents in all things." "Wives, submit your- 
selves unto your own husbands." The same concise and absolute 
form of expression occurs in all these precepts : the same silence as 
to many exceptions or distinctions ; yet no one doubts that the com 
mands of masters, parents, and husbands are often so immoderate, 
unjust, and inconsistent with other obligations, that they both may 
and ought to be resisted. In letters or dissertations written professed- 
ly upon separate articles of morality, we might with more reason have 
looked for a precise delineation of our duty, and some degree of 
modern accuracy in the rules which were laid down for our direc- 
tion : but in those short collections of practical maxims which com- 
pose the conclusion, or some small portion of a doctrinal or perhaps 
controversial epistle, we cannot be surprised to find the author more 
solicitous to impress the duty than curious to enumerate excep- 
tions. 

The consideration of this distinction is alone sufficient to vindicate 
these passages of Scripture from any explanation which may be put 
upon them, in favor of an unlimited passive obedience. But if we 
be permitted to assume a supposition which many commentators pro- 
ceed upon as a certainty, that the first Christians privately cherished 
an opinion that their conversion to Christianity entitled them to new 
immunities, to an exemption, as of right, (however they might give 
way to necessity,) from the authority of the Roman sovereign ; we 
are furnished with a still more apt and satisfactory interpretation of 
the apostle's words. The two passages apply with great propriety 
to the refutation of this error ; they teach the Christian convert to 
obey the magistrate, '• for the Lord's sake ; not only for wrath, but 
for conscience' sake :" "that there is no power but of God ;" "that 
the powers that be," even the present rulers of the Roman empire, 
though heathens and usurpers, seeing they are in possession of the 



208 DUTY OF CIVIL OBEDIENCE. 

actual and necessary authority of civil government, *' are ordained 
of God ;" and, consequently, entitled to receive obedience from those 
who profess themselves the peculiar servants of God, in a greater 
(certainly not in a less) degree than from any others. They briefly 
describe the office of " civil governors, the punishment of evil doers, 
and the praise of them that do well :" from which description of the 
use of government, they justly infer the duty of subjection ; which 
duty, being as extensive as the reason upon which it is founded, be- 
longs to Christians, no less than to the heathen members of the com- 
munity. If it be admitted that the two apostles wrote with a view 
to this particular question, it will be confessed that their words can- 
not be transferred to a question totally different from this, with any 
certainty of carrying along with us their authority and intention. 
There exists no resemblance between the case of a primitive convert, 
who disputed the jurisdiction of the Roman government over a dis- 
ciple of Christianity, and his, who, acknowledging the general au- 
thority of the state over all its subjects, doubts whether that authority 
be not, in some important branch of it, so ill constituted, or abused, 
as to warrant the endeavors of the people to bring about a reforma- 
tion by force. Nor can we judge what reply the apostles would 
have made to this second question, if it had been proposed to them, 
from anything they have delivered upon the^rs^; any more than, in 
the two consultations above described, it could be known beforehand 
what I would say in the latter, from the answer which I gave to the 
former. 

The only defect in this account is, that neither the Scriptures, nor 
any subsequent history of the early ages of the church, furnish any 
direct attestation of the existence of such disaffected sentiments among 
the primitive converts. They supply indeed some circumstances 
which render probable the opinion, that extravagant notions of the 
political rights of the Christian state were at that time entertained by 
many proselytes to the religion. From the question proposed to 
Christ, "Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar ?" it may be pre- 
sumed that doubts had been started in the Jewish schools concerning 
the obligation, or even the lawfulness, of submission to the Roman 
yoke. The accounts delivered by Josephus, of various insurrections 
of the Jews of that and the following ages, excited by this principle, 
or upon this pretence, confirm the presumption. Now, as the Chris- 
tians were at first chiefly taken from the Jews, confounded with them 
by the rest of the world, and, from the affinity of the two religions, 
apt to intermix the doctrines of both, it is not to be wondered at that 
a tenet so flattering to the self-importance of those who embraced it 
should have been communicated to the new institution. Again, the 
teachers of Christianity, among the privileges which their religion 
conferred upon its professors, were wont to extol the " liberty into 
which they were called" — " in which Christ had made them free." 
This liberty, which was intended of a deliverance from the various 
servitude in which they had heretofore lived, to the domination of 
sinful passions, to the superstition of the Gentile idolatry, or the en- 



CIVIL LIBERTY. 209 

cumbered ritual of the Jewish dispensation, might by some be inter* 
preted to signify an emancipation from all restraint which was im- 
posed by an authority merely human. At least, they might be repre- 
sented by their enemies as maintaining notions of this dangerous 
tendency. To some error or calumny of this kind, the words of St. 
Peter seem to alhide :— " For so is the will of God, that with well-doing 
ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men : as free, and not 
using your liberty for a cloak of maliciousness, (z. e. sedition,) but as 
the servants of God." After all, if any one think this conjecture too 
feebly supported by testimony to be relied upon in the interpretation 
of Scripture, he will then revert to the considerations alleged in the 
preceding part of this chapter. 

After so copious an account of what we apprehend to be the general 
design and doctrine of these much agitated passages, little need be 
added in explanation of particular clauses. St. Paul has said, " Who- 
soever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God." This 
phrase, " by the ordinance of God," is by many so interpreted as to 
authorize the most exalted and superstitious ideas of the regal charac- 
ter. But, surely, such interpreters have sacrificed truth to adulation. 
For, in the first place, the expression, as used by St. Paul, is just as 
applicable to one kind of government, and to one kind of succession, 
as to another ; — to the elective magistrates of a pure republic, as to 
an absolute hereditary monarchy. In the next place, it is not affirmed 
of the suj)reme magistrate exclusively, that he is the ordinance of God ; 
the title, whatever it imports, belongs to every inferior officer of the 
state as much as to the highest. The divine right of Icings is, like 
the divine right of other magistrates — the law of the land, or even 
actual and quiet possession of their office : a right ratified, we humbly 
presume, by the divine approbation, so long as obedience to their 
authority appears to be necessary or conducive to the common wel- 
fare. Princes are ordained of God by virtue only of that general de- 
cree by which he assents, and adds the sanction of his will, to every 
law of society which promotes his own purpose — the communication 
of human happiness ; according to which idea of their origin and con- 
stitution (and without any repugnancy to the words of St. Paul,) they 
are by St. Peter denominated the ordinance of man. 



CHAPTER V. 

OF CIVIL LIBERTY. 

Civil Liberty isthe not being restrained by any law but what con^ 
duces in a greater degree to the public welfare. 

To do what we will is natural liberty: to do what we will, con- 
sistently with the interests of the community to which we belong, is 
civil liberty ; that is to say, the only liberty to be desired in a state 
of civil society. 



210 CIVIL LIBERTY. 

I should wish, no doubt, to be allowed to act in every instance as 
I pleased ; but I reflect that the rest also of mankind would then do 
the same ; in which sta.te of universal independence and self-direc- 
tion, I should meet with so many checks and obstacles to my own 
will, from the interference and opposition of other men's, that not only 
my happiness, but my liberty, would be less, than while the whole 
community were subject to the dominion of equal laws. 

The boasted liberty of a state of nature exists only in a state ol 
solitude. In every kind and degree of union and intercourse with his 
species, it is possible that the liberty of the individual may be aug- 
mented by the very laws which restrain it ; because he may gain 
more from the limitation of other men's freedom than he suffers by the 
diminution of his own. Natural liberty is the right of common upon 
a waste ] civil liberty is the safe, exclusive, unmolested enjoyment of 
a cultivated enclosure. 

The definition of civil liberty above laid down imports that the 
laws of a free people impose no restraints upon the private will of the 
subject, which do not conduce in a greater degree to the public happi- 
ness ; by which is intimated, first, That restraint itself is an evil; 
secondly. That this evil ought to be overbalanced by some public ad- 
vantage ; thirdly. That the proof of this advantage lies upon the legis- 
lature • fourthly. That a law being found to produce no sensible good 
effects is a sufficient reason for repealing it, as adverse and injurious 
to the rights of a free citizen, without demanding specific evidence of 
its bad effects. This maxim might be remembered with advantage in 
a revision of many laws in this country : especially of the game laws : 
of the poor laws, so far as they lay restrictions upon the poor them- 
selves ] of the laws against Papists and Dissenters : and among people 
enamored to excess and jealous of their liberty, it seem.s a matter 
of surprise that this principle has been so imperfectly attended to. 

The degree of actual liberty always bearing, according to this ac- 
count of it, a reversed proportion to the number and severity of the 
restrictions which are either useless, or the utility of which does not 
outweigh the evil of the restraint, it follows that every natioD pos- 
sesses some, no nation perfect liberty : that this liberty may be en- 
joyed under every form of government : that it may be impaired in- 
deed, or increased, but that it is neither gained, nor lost, nor recovered, 
by any single regulation, change, or event whatever : that, conse- 
quently, those popular phrases which speak of a free people ; of a 
nation of slaves ; which call one revolution the era of liberty, or 
another the loss of it, with many expressions of a like absolute form, 
are intelligible only in a comparative sense. 

Hence also we are enabled to apprehend the distinction between 
personal and civil liberty. A citizen of the freest republic in the 
world may be imprisoned for his crimes: and though his personal 
freedom be restrained by bolts and fetters, so long as his confine- 
ment is the effect of a beneficial public law, his civil liberty is not in- 
vaded. If this instance appear dubious, the following will be plainer. 
A passenger from the Levant, who upon his return to England should 



CIVIL LIBERTY. • 211 

be conveyed to a lazaretto by an order of quarantine, with whatever 
impatience he mii^ht desire his enlargement, and though he saw a 
guard placed at the door to oppose his escape, or even ready to de- 
stroy his life if he attempted it, would hardly accuse government of 
encroaching upon his civil freedom ; nay, might, perhaps, be all the 
while congratulating himself that he had at length set his foot again 
in a land of liberty. The manifest expediency of the measure not only 
justifies it, but reconciles the most odious confinement with the per- 
fect possession, and the loftiest notions of civil liberty. And if this 
be true of the coercion of a prison, that it is compatible with a state 
of civil freedom, it cannot with reason be disputed of those more 
moderate constraints which the ordinary operation of government im- 
poses upon the will of the individual. It is not the rigor, but the in- 
expediency of laws and acts of authority which makes them ty- 
rannical. 

There is another idea of civil liberty which, though neither so 
simple nor so accurate as the former, agrees better with the significa- 
tion which the usage of common discourse, as well as the example of 
many respectable writers upon the subject, has afiixed to the term. 
This idea places liberty in security: making it to consist, not merely 
in an actual exemption from the constraint of useless and noxious laws 
and acts of dominion, but in being free from the danger of having such 
hereafter imposed or exercised. Thus, speaking of the political state 
of modern Europe, we are accustomed to say of Sweden, that she hath 
lost her liberty by the revolution which lately took place in that 
country; and yet we are assured tha- the people continue to be 
governed by the same laws as before, o; by others which are wiser, 
milder, and more equitable. What then have they lost ? They have 
lost the power and functions of their diet ] the constitution of their 
states and orders, whose deliberations and concurrence were required 
in the form.ation and establishment of every public law : and thereby 
have parted with the security which they possessed against any at- 
tempts of the crown to harass its subjects, by oppressive and useless 
exertions of prerogative. The loss of this security we denominate 
the loss of liberty. They have changed, not their laws, but their legis- 
lature; not their enjoyment, but their safety ; not their present bur- 
dens, but their prospects of future grievances ; and this we pronounce 
a change from the condition of freemen to that of slaves. In like 
manner, in our own country, the act of parliament, in the reign of 
Henry the Eighth, which gave to the king's proclamation the force 
of law, has properly been called a complete and formal surrender of 
the liberty of the nation; and would have been so, although no 
proclamation were issued in pursuance of these new powers, or none 
but what was recommended by the highest wisdom and utility. The 
security was gone. Were it probable that the welfare and accom- 
modation of the people would be as studiously and as providently 
consulted in the edicts of a despotic prince as by the resolutions of a 
popular assembl ', then would an absolute form of government bo no 
less free than the purest democracy. The different degree of care and 



212 CIVIL LIBERTY. 

knowledge of the public interest, which may reasonably be expected 
from the different form and composition of the legislature, constitutes 
the distinction, in respect of liberty, as well between these two ex- 
tremes, as between all the intermediate modifications of civil govern- 
ment. 

The definitions which have been framed of civil liberty, and which 
have become the subject of much unnecessary altercation, are most 
of them adapted to this idea. Thus one political writer makes the 
very essence of the subject's liberty to consist in his being governed 
by no laws but those to which he hath actually consented ; another 
is satisfied with an indirect and virtual consent; another, again, 
places civil liberty in the separation of the legislative and executive 
offices of government ; another, in the being governed by /a-w.', that is, 
by known, preconstituted, inflexible rules of action and adjudication; 
a fifth, in the exclusive right of the people to tax themselves by their 
own representatives ; a sixth, in the freedom and purity of elections 
of representatives ; a seventh, in the control which the democratic 
part of the constitution possesses over the military establishment. 
Concerning which, and some other similar accounts of civil liberty, 
it may be observed, that they all labor under one inaccuracy, viz., 
that they describe not so much liberty itself, as the safeguards and 
preservatives of liberty : for example, a man's being governed by no 
laws but those to which he has given his consent, were it practicable, 
is no otherwise necessary to the enjoyment of civil liberty, than as it 
affords a probable security against the dictation of laws imposing 
superfluous restrictions upon his private will. This remark is ap- 
plicable to the rest. The diversity of these definitions will not sur- 
prise us, when we consider that there is no contrariety or opposition 
among them whatever : for, by how many different provisions and 
precautions civil liberty is fenced and protected, so many different ac- 
counts of liberty itself, all sufficiently consistent with truth and with 
each other, may, according to this mode of explaining the term, be 
framed and adopted. 

Truth cannot be offended by a definition, but propriety may. 
In which view, those definitions of liberty ought to be rejected which, 
by making that essential to civil freedom which is unattainable in ex- 
perience, inflame expectations that can never be gratified, and disturb 
the public content with complaints which no wisdom or benevolence 
of government can remove. 

It will not be thought extraordinary, that an idea, which occurs so 
much oftener as the subject of panegyric and careless declamation, 
than of just reasoning or correct knowledge, should be attended with 
uncertainty and confusion ; or that it should be found impossible to 
contrive a definition which may include the numerous, unsettled, and 
ever-varying significations which the term is made to stand for, and 
at the same time accord with the condition and experience of social 
life. 

Of the two ideas that have been stated of civil liberty, whichever 
wo assume, and whatever reasoni g we found upon them, concerning 



DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 213 

its extent, nature, value, and preservation, this is the conclusion : 
that that people, government, and constitution is the freest which 
makes the best provision for the enacting of expedient and salutary- 
laws. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OF DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 

As a series of appeals must be finite, there necessarily exists in 
every government a power from which the constitution has provided 
no appeal ] and which power, for that reason, may be termed abso- 
lute, omnipotent, uncontrollable, arbitrary, despotic ; and is alike so 
in all countries. 

The person, or assembly, in whom this power resides, is called the 
sovereign^ or the supreme power of the state. 

Since to the same power universally appertains the office of estab- 
lishing public laws, it is called also the legislature of the state. 

A government receives its denomination from the form of the legis- 
lature ; which form is likewise what we commonly mean by the con- 
^iitution of a country. 

Political writers enumerate three principal forms of government, 
which, however, are to be regarded rather as the simple form, by 
some combination and intermixture of which all actual governments 
are composed, than as anywhere existing in a pure and elementary 
atate. These forms are, 

1 . Despotism, or absolute monarchy, where the legislature is in a 
single person. 

2. An ARISTOCRACY, whcrc the legislature is in a select assembly, 
the members of which either fill up by election the vacancies in their 
own body^ or succeed to their places in it by inheritance, property, 
tenure of certain lands, or in respect of some personal right or quali- 
fication. 

3. A REPUBLIC, or democracy, where the people at large, either col- 
lectively or by representation, constitute the legislature. 

The separate advantages of monarchy are unity of counsel, activity, 
decision, secrecy, dispatch; the military strength and energy which 
result from these qualities of government ; the exclusion of popular 
and aristocratical contentions ] the preventing, by a known rule of 
succession, of all competition for the supreme power ; and thereby 
repressing the hopes, intrigues, and dangerous ambition of aspiring 
citizens. 

The mischiefs, or rather the dangers, of monarchy, are tyranny, 
expense, exaction, military domination ] unnecessary wars, waged to 
gratify the passions of an individual ; risk of the character of the 
rei2:ning prince : ignorance in the governors, of the interests and ac- 
coranolni on of the people, and a consequent deficisncv of salutary 



214 DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 

regulations ; want of constancy and uniformity in the rules of govern 
ment, and, proceeding from thence, insecurity of person and property. 

The separate advantage of an aristocracy consists in the wisdom 
which may be expected from experience and education : — a permanent 
council naturally possesses experience ] and the members who sue* 
ceed to their places in it by inheritance will, probably, be trained and 
educated with a view to the stations which they are destined by theii 
birth to occupy. 

The mischiefs of an aristocracy are dissensions in the ruling orders 
of the state, which, from the want of a common superior, are liable to 
proceed to the most desperate extremities ; oppression of the lower 
orders by the privileges of the higher, and by laws partial to the 
separate interests of the law-makers. 

The advantages of a republic are liberty, or exemption from need- 
less restrictions ; equal laws; regulations adapted to the wants and 
circumstances of the people ; public spirit, frugality, averseness to 
war ; the opportunities which democratic assemblies afford to men of 
every description, of producing their abilities and counsels to public 
observation, and the exciting thereby, and calling forth to the service 
of the commonwealth the faculties of its best citizens. 

The evils of a republic are dissension, tumults, faction ; the at- 
tempts of powerful citizens to possess themselves of the empire ] the 
confusion, rage, and clamor, which are the inevitable consequence? 
of assembling multitudes, and of propounding questions of state to the 
discussion of the people ; the delay and disclosure of public counsel? 
and designs ; and the imbecility of measures retarded by the necessity 
of obtaining the consent of numbers : lastly, the oppression of the 
provinces which are not admitted to a participation in the legislative 
power. 

A. mza:e(i government is composed by the combination of two or more 
of the simple forms of government above described; and in whatevei 
proportion each form enters into the constitution of a government, in 
the same proportion may both the advantages and evils, which we 
have attributed to that form, be expected ; that is, those are the uses 
to be maintained and cultivated in each part of the constitution, and 
these are the dangers to be provided against in each. Thus, if secrecy 
and dispatch be truly enumerated among the separate excellencies ol 
regal government, then a mixed government, which retains monarchy 
in one part of its constitution, should be careful that the other estates 
of the empire do not, by an officious and inquisitive interference with 
the executive functions, which are, or ought to be, reserved to the 
administration of the prince, interpose delays, or divulge what it is ex- 
pedient to conceal. On the other hand, if profusion, exaction, mili- 
tary domination, and needless wars, be justly accounted natural 
properties of monarchy, in its simple unqualified form ; then are these 
the objects to which, in a mixed government, the aristocratic and 
popular parts of the constitution ought to direct their vigilance; the 
dangers against which they should raise and fortify their barriers, 



DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 216 

these are departments of sovereignty, over which a power of inspec- 
tion and control ought to be deposited with the people. 

The same observation may be repeated of all the other advantages 
and inconveniences which have been ascribed to the several simple 
forms of government; and affords a rule whereby to direct the con- 
struction, improvements, and administration of mixed government, 
subjected however to this remark, that a quality sometimes results 
from the conjunction of two simple forms of government, which be- 
longs not to the separate existence of either. Thus corruption, 
which has no place in absolute monarchy, and little in a pure re- 
public, is sure to gain admission into a constitution which divides 
the supreme power between an executive magistrate and a popular 
council. 

An hereditary monarchy is universally to be preferred to an elective 
monarch. The confession of every writer on the subject of civil 
government, the experience of ages, the example of Poland, and of the 
papal dominions, seem to place this among the few indubitable maxims 
which the science of politics admits of. A crown is too splendid a 
prize to be conferred upon merit : the passions or interests of the 
electors exclude all consideration of the qualities of the competitors. 
The same observation holds concerning the appointment to any office 
which is attended with a great share of power or emolument. 
Nothing is gained by a popular choice, worth the dissensions, tumults, 
and interruption of regular industry, with which it is inseparably at- 
tended. Add to this, that a king who owes his elevation to the event 
of a contest, or to any other cause than a fixed rule of succession, 
will be apt to regard one part of his subjects as the associates of his 
fortune, and the other as conquered foes. Nor should it be forgotten, 
among the advantages of an hereditary monarchy, that, as plans of 
national improvement and reform are seldom brought to maturity by 
the exertions of a single reign, a nation cannot attain to the degree 
of happiness and prosperity to which it is capable of being carried, 
unless a uniformity of counsels, a consistency of public measures and 
designs, be continued through a succession of ages. This benefit 
may be expected with greater probability, where the supreme power 
descends in the same race, and where each prince succeeds, in some 
sort, to the aim, pursuits, and dispositions of his ancestor, than if the 
crown, at every change, devolved upon a stranger, whose first care 
will commonly be to pull down what his predecessor had built up ] 
and to substitute systems of administration which must, in their turn, 
give way to the more favorite novelties of the next successor. 

Aristocracies are of two kinds : — First, where the power of the 
nobility belongs to them in their collective capacity alone ; that is, 
where, although the government reside in an assembly of the order, 
yet the members of that assembly separately and individually possess 
no authority or privilege beyond the rest of the community : — this 
describes the constitution of Venice. Secondly, where the nobles are 
severally invested with great personal power and immunities, and 
where the power of the senate is little more than the aggregated power 



216 DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 

of the individuals who compose it ; — this is the constitution of Poland. 
Of these two forms of government, the first is more tolerable than the 
last ; for, although the members of a senate should many, or even all 
of them, be profligate enough to abuse the authority of their stations 
in the prosecution of private designs, yet, not being all under a 
temptation to the same injustice, not having all the same end to gain, 
it would still be difficult to obtain the consent of a majority to any 
specific act of oppression which the iniquity of an individual might 
prompt him to propose : or if the will were the same, the power is 
more confined; one tyrant, whether the tyranny reside in a single 
person, or a senate, cannot exercise oppression at so many places at 
the same time, as it may be carried on by the dominion of a numerous 
nobility over their respective vassals and dependents. Of all species 
of domination, this is the most odious ; the freedom and satisfaction 
of private life are more constrained and harassed by it than by the 
most vexatious laws, or even by the lawless will of an arbitrary mo- 
narch, from whose knowledge, and from whose injustice, the greatest 
part of his subjects are removed by their distance, or concealed by 
their obscurity. 

Europe exhibits more than one modern example where the people, 
aggrieved by the exactions, or provoked by the enormities of their 
immediate superiors, have joined with the reigning prince in the over 
throw of the aristocracy, deliberately exchanging their condition for 
the miseries of despotism. About the middle of the last century, the 
commons of Denmark, weary of the oppressions which they had long 
suffered from the nobles, and exasperated by some recent insults, pre- 
sented themselves at the foot of the throne with a formal offer of their 
consent to establish unlimited dominion in the king. The revolution 
in Sweden, still more lately brought about with the acquiescence, not 
10 say the assistance, of the people, owed its success to the same cause, 
namely, to the prospect of deliverance that it afforded from the tyranny 
ivhich their nobles exercised under the old constitution. In England, 
the people beheld the depression of the barons, under the house of 
Tudor, with satisfaction, although they saw the crown acquiring 
thereby a power which no limitations that the constitution had then 
provided were likely to confine. The lesson to be drawn from such 
events is this : that a mixed government, which admits a patrician 
order into its constitution, ought to circumscribe the personal privileges 
of the nobility, especially claims of hereditary jurisdiction and local 
authority, with a jealousy equal to the solicitude with which it wishes 
its own preservation : for nothing so alienates the minds of the people 
from the government under which they live, by a perpetual sense of 
annoyance and inconveniency, or so prepares them for the practices 
of an enterprising prince, or a factious demagogue, as the abuse 
which almost always accompanies the existence of separate im- 
munities. 

Among the inferior, but by no means inconsiderable advantages oi 
a Democratic constitution, or of a constitution in which the people 



DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 217 

partake of the power of legislation, the following should not be ne- 
glected ! — 

1 . The direction which it gives to the education, studies, and pur- 
suits of the superior orders of the community. The share which this 
has in forming the public manners and national character is very im- 
portant. In countries in which the gentry are excluded from all con- 
cerns in the government, scarcely anything is left which leads to ad- 
vancement, but the profession of arms. They who do not addict 
themselves to this profession, (and miserable must that country be, 
which constantly employs the military semce of a great proportion 
of any order of its subjects !) are commonly lost by the mere want of 
object and destination; that is, they either fall, without reserve, into 
the most sottish habits of animal gratification, or entirely devote them- 
selves to the attainment of those futile arts and decorations which 
compose the business and recommendations of a court ; on the other 
hand, where the whole, or any effective portion of civil power, is 
possessed by a popular assembly, more serious pursuits will be en 
couraged ; purer morals, and a more intellectual character will engage 
the public esteem ; those faculties which qualify men for delibera- 
tion and debate, and which are the fruit of sober habits, of early and 
long-continued application, will be roused and animated by the re- 
ward which, of ail others, most readily awakens the ambition of the 
human mind — political dignity and importance. 

2. Popular elections procure to the common people courtesy from 
their superiors. That contemptuous and overbearing insolence, with 
which the lower orders of the community are wont to be treated by 
the higher, is greatly mitigated where the people have something to 
give. The assiduity with which their favor is sought upon these 
occasions serves to generate settled habits of condescension and re- 
spect ; and as human life is more embittered by affronts than injuries, 
whatever contributes to procure mildness and civility of manners 
*owards those who are most liable to suffer from a contrary behavior 
''.orrects, with the pride, in a great measure, the evil of inequality, and 
deserves to be accounted among the most generous institutions of 
social life. 

3. The satisfactions which the people of free governments derive 
from the knowledge and agitation of political subjects; such as the 
proceedings and debates of the senate : the conduct and characters 
of ministers ; the revolutions, intrigues, and contentions of parties ; 
and, in general, from the discussion of public measures, questions, and 
occurrences. Subjects of this sort excite just enough of interest and 
emotion to afford a moderate engagement to the thoughts, without 
rising to any painful degree of anxiety, or ever leaving a fixed op- 
pression upon the spirits : — and what is this, but the end and aim of 
all those amusements which compose so much of the business of life 
and the value of riches ? For my part (and I believe it to be the case 
with most men who are arrived at the middle age, and occupy the 
middle classes of life,) had I all the money which I pay in taxes to 
government, at liberty to lay out upon amusement and diversion, J 

K 



218 DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 

know not whether I could make choice of any in which I could find 
greater pleasure than what I receive from expecting, \earing. and re- 
lating public news; reading parliamentary debates and proceedings: 
canvassing the political arguments, projects, predictions, and intelli- 
gence, which are conveyed by various channels, to every corner of 
the kingdom. These topics, exciting universal curiosity, and being 
such as almost every man is ready to form and prepared to .deliver 
his opinion about, greatly promote, and, I think, improve, conversa- 
tion. They render it more rational and more innocent; they supply 
a substitute for drinking, gaming, scandal, and obscenity. Now the 
secrecy, the jealousy, the solitude, and precipitation of despotic 
governments exclude all this. But the loss, you say, is trifling. I 
know that it is possible to render even the mention of it ridiculous, 
by representing it as the idle employment of the most insignificant 
part of the nation, the folly of village statesmen and coffee-house 
politicians : but I allow nothing to be a trifle which ministers to the 
harmless gratification of multitudes; nor any order of men to be in- 
significant whose number bears a respectable proportion to the sum 
of the whole community. 

We have been accustomed to an opinion, that a republican form 
of government suits only With the affairs of a small state : which 
opinion is founded in the consideration, that unless the people in every 
district of the empire be admitted to a share in the national representa- 
tion, the government is not, as to them, a republic ; that elections, 
where the constituents are numerous, and dispersed through a wide 
extent of country, are conducted with difficulty, or rather, indeed, 
managed by the intrigues and combinations of a few, who are situated 
near the place of election, each voter considering his single suffrage 
as too minute a portion of the general interest to deserve his care or 
attendance, much less to be worth any opposition to influence and 
application; that while we contract the representation within a com- 
pass small enough to admit of orderly debate, the interest of the con- 
stituent becomes too small or the representative too great. It is diffi- 
cult also to maintain any connection between them. He who repre- 
sents two hundred thousand is necessarily a stranger to the greatest 
part of those who elect him ; and when his interest among them ceases 
to depend upon an acquaintance with their persons and character, or 
a care or knowledge of their affairs ; when such a representative finds 
the treasure and honors of a great empire at the disposal of a few, and 
himself one of the few ; there is little reason to hope that he will not 
prefer to his public duty those temptations of personal aggrandize- 
ment which his situation offers, and which the price of his vote will 
always purchase. All appeal to the people is precluded by the im- 
possibility of collecting a sufficient proportion of their force and 
numbers. The factions and the unanimity of the senate are equally 
dangerous. Add to these considerations, that in a democratic constitu- 
tion the mechanism is too complicated, and the motions too slow, for 
the operations of a great empire, whose defence and government re- 
quire execution and despatch, in proportion to the magnitude, extent 



BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 219 

and variety of its concerns. There is weight, no doubt, in these 
reasons : but much of the objection seems to be done away by the 
contrivance of a /^(/era/ republic, which, distributing the country into 
districts of a commodious extent, and leaving to each district its in- 
ternal legislation, reserves to a convention of the states the adjust- 
ment of their relative claims ] the levying, direction, and government 
of the common force of the confederacy; the requisition of subsidies 
for the support of this force ; the making of peace and war ] the 
entering into treaties ; the regulation of foreign commerce ] the 
equalization of duties upon imports, so as to prevent the defrauding 
of the revenue of one province by smuggling arricles of taxation from 
the borders of another, and likewise so as to guard against undue 
partialities in the encouragement of trade. To what limits such a 
republic might, without inconveniency, enlarge its dominions, by as- 
suming neighboring provinces into the confederation : or how far it is 
capable of uniting the liberty of a small commonwealth with the safety 
of a powerful empire ; or whether, among co-ordinate powers, dis- 
sensions and jealousies would not be likely to arise, which, for want 
of a common superior, might proceed to fatal extremities, are ques- 
tions upon which the records of mankind do not authorize us to de 
cide with tolerable certainty. The experiment is about to be tried ir 
America upon a large scale. 



CHAPTER VII. 

OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 

By the constitution of a country is meant so much of its law as 
relates to the designation and form of the legislature ; the rights and 
functions of the several parts of the legislative body ; the construc- 
tion, office, and jurisdiction of courts of justice. The constitution is 
one principal division, section, or title of the code of public laws ; dis- 
tinguished from the rest only by the superior importance to the sub- 
ject of which it treats. Therefore the terms constitutional and uncon- 
stitutional mean legal and illegal. The distinction and the ideas which 
these terms denote are founded in the same authority with the law of 
the land upon any other subject ; and to be ascertained by the same 
inquiries.. In England, the system of public jurisprudence is made 
up of acts of parliament, of decisions of courts of law, and of imme- 
morial usages ; consequently these are the principles of which the 
English constitution itself consists, the sources from which all our 
knowledge of its nature and limitations is to be deduced, and the au- 
thorities to which all appeal ought to be made, and by which every 
constitutional doubt and question can alone be decided. This plain 
and intelligible definition is the more necessary to be preserved in our 
thoughts, as some writers upon the subject absurdly confound what 
is constitutional with what is expedient ] pronouncing forthwith a 



220 BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 

measure to be unconstitutional which they adjudge in any respect to 
be detrimental or dangerous : while others, again, ascribe a kind of 
transcendant authority, or mysterious sanctity to the constitution, as 
if it were founded in some higher original than that which gives forc-e 
and obligation to the ordinary laws and statutes of the realm, or were 
inviolable on any other account than its intrinsic utility. An act of 
parliament in England can never be unconstitutional, in the strict and 
proper acceptation of the term ; in a lower sense it may, viz.^ when it 
militates with the spirit, contradicts the analogy, or defeats the pro- 
vision of other laws, made to regulate the form of government. Even 
that flagitious abuse of their trust, by which a parliament of Henry 
the Eighth conferred upon the king's proclamation the authority of 
law, was unconstitutional only in this latter sense. 

Most of those who treat of the British constitution consider it as a 
scheme of government formerly planned and contrived by our ances- 
tors in some certain era of our national history, and as set up in pur- 
suance of such regular plan and design. Something of this sort is 
secretly supposed or referred to in the expressions of those who speak 
of the " principles of the constitution," of bringing back the constitu- 
tion to its " first principles," of restoring it to its " original purity," or 
*^ primitive model." Now this appears to me an erroneous conception 
of the subject. No such plan was ever formed ; consequently no such 
first principles, original model, or standard, exist : I mean, there never 
was a date or point of time in our history wh5n the government of 
England was to be set up anew, and when it was referred to a single 
person, or assembly, or committee, to frame a charter for the future 
government of the country ; or when a constitution so prepared and 
digested was by common consent received and established. In the 
time of the civil wars, or rather between the death of Charles the 
First and the restoration of his son, many such projects were published 
but none were carried into execution. The Great Charter and the Bill 
of Rights were wise and strenuous efforts to obtain security against 
certain abuses of regal power, by which the subject had been formerly 
aggrieved : but these were, either of them, much too partial modifica- 
tions of the constitution to give it a new original. The constitution 
of England, like that of most countries of Europe, hath grown out of 
occasion and emergency ; from the fluctuating policy of different ages ; 
from the contentions, successes, interests, and opportunities of different 
orders and parties of men in the community. It resembles one of 
those old mansions, which, instead of being built all at once, after a 
regular plan, and according to the rules of architecture at present estab- 
lished, has been reared in different ages of the art, has been altered 
from time to time, and has been continually receiving additions and 
repairs, suited to the taste, fortune, or conveniency of its successive 
proprietors. In such a building we look in vain for the elegance and 
proportion, for the just order and correspondence of parts which we 
expect in a modern edifice ; and which external symmetry, after all, 
contribute much more perhaps to the amusement of the beholder than 
the accommodation of the inhabitant. 



BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 22| 

In the British, and possibly in all other constitutions, there exists ? 
wide difference between the actual state of the government and th# 
theory. The one results from the other; but still they are different 
When we contemplate the theory of the British government, we see 
the king invested with the most absolute personal impunity; with a 
power of rejecting laws, which have been resolved upon by both 
houses of parliament ; of conferring by his charter, upon any set oi 
succession of men he pleases the privilege of sending representatives 
into one house of parliament, as by his immediate appointment he can 
place whom he will in the other. What is this, a foreigner might ask, 
but a more circuitous despotism ? Yet, when we turn our attention 
from the legal extent to the actual exercise of royal a-uthority in En- 
gland, we see these formidable prerogatives dwindled into m.ere cere- 
monies ; and, in their stead, a sure and commanding influence of 
which the constitution, it seems, is totally ignorant, growing out of 
that enormous patronage which the increased territory and opulence 
of the empire have placed in the disposal of the executive magis- 
trate. 

Upon questions of reform, the habit of reflection to be encouraged 
is a sober comparison of the constitution under which we live, — not 
with models of speculative perfection, but with the actual chance of 
obtaining a better. This turn of thought will generate a political dis- 
position, equally removed from that puerile admiration of present es- 
tablishments, w^iiich sees no fault, and can endure no change ; and 
that distempered sensibility, which is alive only to perceptions of in- 
conveniency, and is too impatient to be delivered from the uneasiness 
which it feels, to compute either the peril or expense of the remedy. 
Political innovations commonly produce many effects besides those that 
are intended. The direct consequence is often the least important. 
Incidental, remote, and unthought-of evils or advantages frequently 
exceed the good that is designed, or the mischief that is foreseen. It 
is from the silent and unobserved operation, from the obscure progress 
of causes set at work for different purposes, that the greatest revolu- 
tions take their rise. When Elizabeth and her immediate successor 
applied themselves to the encouragement and regulation of trade by 
many wise laws, they knew not that, together with wealth and in- 
dustry, they were diffusing a consciousness of strength and inde- 
pendency, which would not lono; endure, under the forms of a mixed 
government, the dominion of arbitrary princes. When it was debated 
whether the Munity Act, the law by which the army is governed and 
maintained, should be temporar)^ or perpetual, little else probably oc- 
curred to the advocates of an annual bill than the expediency of re- 
taining a control over the most dangerous prerogative of the crown, 
the direction and command of a standing army ; w^hereas, in its effect, 
this single reservation has altered the whole frame and quality of the 
British constitution. For since, in consequence of the military system 
which prevails in neighboring and rival nations, as well as on account 
of the internal exigencies of government, a standing army has become 
essential to the safety and administration of the empire, it enable* 



222 BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 

parliament, by discontinuing this necessary provision, so to enforce 

its resolutions upon any other subject, as to render the king's dissent 
to a law which has received the approbation of both houses too 
dangerous an experiment any longer to be advised. A contest be- 
tween the king and parliament cannot now be persevered in without 
a dissolution of the government. Lastly, when the constitution con- 
ferred upon the crown the nomination of all employments in the 
public service, the authors of this arrangement were led to it by the 
obvious propriety of leaving to a master the choice of his servants; 
and by the manifest inconveniency of engaging the national council, 
upon every vacancy, in those personal contests which attend elections 
to places of honor and emolument. Our ancestors did not observe 
that this disposition added an influence to the regal office, which, as 
the number and value of public employments increased, would super- 
sede, in a great measure, the forms, and change the character, of the 
ancient constitution. They knew not what the experience and re- 
flection of modern ages have discovered, that patronage universally 
is power 5 that he who possesses in a sufficient degree the means of 
gratifying the desires of mankind after wealth and distinction, by 
whatever checks and forms his authority may be limited or disguised, 
will direct the management of public affairs. Whatever be the me- 
chanism of the political engine, he will guide the motion. These 
instances are adduced in order to illustrate the proposition which we 
laid down, that, in politics, the most important and permanent effects 
have for the most part been incidental and unforeseen : And this pro- 
position we inculcate, for the sake of the caution which teaches that 
changes ought not to be adventured upon without a comprehensive 
discernment of the consequences, — without a knowledge as well of 
the remote tendency, as of the immediate design. The courage of a 
statesman should resemble that of a commander, who, however re- 
gardless of personal danger, never forgets that, with his own, he 
commits the lives and fortunes of a multitude ; and who does not con- 
sider it as any proof of zeal or valor to stake the safety of other men 
upon the success of a perilous or desperate enterprise. 

There is one end of civil government peculiar to a good constitu- 
tion, namely, the happiness of its subjects ; there is another end es- 
sential to a good government, but common to it with many bad ones, 
its own preservation. Observing that the best form of government 
would be defective which did not provide for its own permanency, in 
our political reasonings we consider all such provisions as expedient ; 
and are content to accept as a sufficient ground for a measure, or law, 
that it is necessary or conducive to the preservation of the constitu- 
tion. Yet, in truth, such provisions are absolutely expedient, and 
such an excuse final only while the constitution is worth preserving; 
that is, until it can be exchanged for a better. I premise this dis- 
tinction, because many things in the English, as in every constitution, 
are to be vindicated and accounted for, solely from their tendency to 
maintain the government in its present state, and the several parts of 
it in possession of the powers which the constitution has assigned to 



BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 223 

.hem ; and because I would wish it to be remarked, that such a con- 
Bideration is always subordinate to another, — the value and useful- 
ness of the constitution itself. 

Tlie Government of England, which has been sometimes called a 
mixed government, sometimes a limited monarchy, is formed by a 
combination of three regular species of government — the monarchy, 
residing in the king ; the aristocracy, in the House of Lords ] and the 
republic, being represented by the House of Commons. The perfec- 
tion intended by such a scheme of government is, to unite the advan- 
tages of the several simple forms, and to exclude the inconveniences. 
To what degree this purpose is attained or attainable in the British 
constitution ] wherein it is lost sight of or neglected ; and by what 
means it may in any part be promoted with better success, the reader 
will be enabled to judge, by a separate recollection of these advan- 
tages and inconveniences, as enumerated in the preceding chapter, 
and a distinct application of each to the political condition of this 
country. We will present our remarks upon the subject in a brief 
account of the expedients by which the British constitution provides. 

1st. For the interest of its subjects, 

2d. For its own preservation. 

The contrivances for the first of these purposes are the follow^ 
ing: — 

In order to promote the establishment of salutary public laws, 
every citizen of the state is ca,pable of becoming a member of the 
senate; and every senator possesses a right of propounding to the 
deliberation of the legislature whatever law he pleases. 

Every district of the empire enjoys the privilege of choosing repre- 
sentatives, informed of the interests, and circumstances, and desires of 
their constituents, and entitled by their situation to communicate that 
information to the national council. The meanest subject has some 
one whom he can call upon to bring forward his complaints and re- 
quests to public attention. 

By annexing the right of voting for members of the House of Com- 
mons to different qualifications in different places, each order and pro- 
fession of men in the community become virtually represented; that 
is, men of all orders and professions, statesmen, courtiers, country 
gentlemen, lawyers, merchants, manufacturers, soldiers, sailors, in- 
terested in the prosperity, and experienced in the occupation of their 
respective professions, obtain seats in parliament. 

The elections at the same time are so connected with the influence 
of landed property, as to afford a certainty that a considerable number 
of men of great estates will be returned to parliament; and are also 
so modified, that men the most eminent and successful in their re- 
spective professions are the most likely, by their riches, or the weight 
of their stations, to prevail in these competitions. 

The number, fortune, and quality ot the members ; the variety of 
interests and characters among them; above all, the temporary dura- 
tion of their power, and the change of men which every new election 
produces, are so many securities to the public, as well against the 



224 BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 

subjection of their Judgments to any external dictation, as against the 
formation of a junto in their own body, sufficiently powerful to govern 
their decisions. 

The representatives are so intermixed with the constituents, and the 
<ionstituents with the rest of the people, that they cannot, without a 
partiality too flagrant to be endured, impose any burthen upon the 
subject in which they do not share themselves ', nor scarcely can they 
adopt an advantageous regulation in which their own interests will 
not participate of the advantage. 

The proceedings and debates of parliament, and the parliamentary 
conduct of each representative, are known by the people at large. 

The representative is so far dependent upon the constituent, and 
political importance upon public favor, that a member of parliament 
cannot more effectually recommend himself to eminence and advance- 
ment in the state, than by contriving and patronizing laws of public 
utility. 

When intelligence of the condition, wants, and occasions of the peo- 
ple is thus collected from every quarter ] when such a variety of inven- 
tion, and so many understandings are set at work upon the subject ; 
it may be presumed, that the most eligible expedient, remedy or im- 
provement will occur to some one or other • and when a wise counsel, 
or beneficial regulation, is once suggested, it may be expected, from 
the disposition of an assembly so constituted as the British House ot 
Commons is, that it cannot fail of receiving the approbation of a 
majority. 

To prevent those destructive contentions for the supreme power, 
which are sure to take place where the members of the state do not 
live under an acknowledged head, and a known rule of succession } 
to preserve the people in tranquillity at home, by a speedy and vigo- 
rous execution of the laws ; to protect their interests abroad, by strength 
and energy in military operations, by those advantages of decision, 
secrecy, and dispatch, which belong to the resolutions of mo- 
narchical councils ; for these purposes, the constitution has committed 
the executive government to the administration and limited authority 
of an hereditary king. 

In the defence of the empire ; in the maintenance of its power, 
dignity, and privileges with foreign nations ; in the advancement oi 
its trade by treaties and conventions ; and in the providing for the 
general administration of municipal justice, by a proper choice and 
appointment of magistrates ; the inclination of the king and of the people 
usually coincides : in this part, therefore, of the regal office the con- 
stitution intrusts the prerogative with ample powers. 

The dangers principally to be apprehended from regal government 
relate to the two articles taxation and punishment. In every form of 
government from which the people are excluded, it is the interest of 
the governors to get as much, and of the governed to give as little as 
they can : the power also of punishment, in the hands of an arbitrary 
prince, oftentimes becomes an engine of extortion, jealousy, and re- 
venue. Wisely, therefore, hath the British constitution guarded the 



BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 225 

safety of the people, in these tvro points, by the most studious pre- 
cautions. 

Upon that of taxation^ every law which, by the remotest construc- 
tion, may be deemed to levy money upon the property of the subject, 
must originate, that is, must first be proposed and assented to in the 
House of Commons : by which regulation, accompanying the weight 
which that assembly possesses in all its functions, the levying of 
taxes is almost exclusively reserved to the popular part of the con- 
stitution, who. it is presumed, will not tax themselves, nor their fel- 
low-subjects, without being first convinced of the necessity of the aids 
which they grant. 

The application also of the public supplies is watched with the 
same circumspection as the assessment. Many taxes are annual ; the 
produce of others is mortgaged, or appropriated to specific services : 
the expenditure of all of them is accounted for in the House of Com- 
mons ; as computations ot the charge for the purpose for which they 
are wanted are previously submitted to the same tribunal. 

In the infliction of punishments the power of the crown, and of the 
magistrate appointed by the crown, is confined by the most precise 
limitations : the guilt of the offender must be pronounced by twelve 
men of his own order, indifferently chosen out of the county where 
the ofience was committed : the punishment or the limits to which the 
punishment may be extended are ascertained, and affixed to the crime, 
by laws which know not the person of the criminal. 

And whereas arbitrary or clandestine confinement is the injury 
most to be dreaded from the strong hand of the executive govern- 
ment, because it deprives the prisoner at once of protection and de- 
fence, and delivers him into the power, and to the malicious or in- 
terested designs of his enemies ; the cpnstitution has provided against 
this danger with double solicitude. The ancient writ of habeas corpus, 
the habeas corpus act of Charles the Second, and the practice and 
determinations of our sovereign courts of justice, founded upon these 
laws, afford a complete remedy for every conceivable case of illegal 
imprisonment.* 

Treason being that charge under color of which the destruction of 

* Upon the complaint in writing by, or on behalf of, any person in confinement, to 
any of the four courts of Westminster Hall, in term-time, or to the Lord Chancellor, 
or one of the Judges, in the vacation ; and upon a probable reason being suggested 
to question the legality of the detention, a writ is issued to the person in whose 
custody the complainant is alleged to be, commanding him within a certain limited 
and short time to produce the body of the prisoner, and the authority under which 
he is detained. Upon the return of the writ, strict and instantaneous obedience to 
which is enforced by very severe penalties, if no lawful cause of imprisonment 
appear, the court or judge before whom the prisoner is brought is authorized and 
bound to discharge him ; even though he may have been committed by a secretary, 
or other high oSicer of state, by the privy-council, or by the king in person : so that 
no subject of this realm can be held in confinement by any power, or under any pre- 
tence whatever, provided he can find means to convey his complaint to one of the 
four courts of Westminster Hall, or, during their recess^ to any of the Judges of the 
same, unless all these several tribunals agree in determining his imprisonment to be 
legal. He may make application to them in succession ; and if one out of the num 
ber be found who thinks the prisoner entitled to his liberty, that one possesses au 
thority to restore it to him. 

K2 



226 BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 

an obnoxious individual is often sought ; and government being at all 
times more immediately a party in the prosecution ; the law, besides 
the general care with which it w^atches over the safety of the accused, 
in this case, sensible of the unequal contest in which the subject is 
engaged, has assisted his defence with extraordinary indulgences. 
By two statutes, enacted since the Revolution, every person indicted 
for high treason shall have a copy of his indictment, a list of the 
witnesses to be produced, and of the jury empanneled, delivered to 
him ten days before the trial : he is also permitted to make his de- 
fence by council , — privileges which are not allowed to the prisoner 
in a trial for any other crime : and what is of more importance to the 
party than all the rest, the testimony of two witnesses, at the least, is 
required to convict a person of treason ; whereas, one positive witness 
is sufficient in almost every other species of accusation. 

We proceed, in the second place, to inquire in what manner the con- 
stitution has provided for its own preservation; that is, in what 
manner each part of the legislature is secured in the exercise of the 
powers assigned to it, from the encroachments of the other parts. 
This security is sometimes called the balance of the constitution : and 
the political equilibrium, which this phrase denotes, consists in two 
contrivances, — a balance of power, and a balance of interest. By a 
balance of power is meant, that there is no power possessed by one 
part of the legislature the abuse or excess of which is not checked by 
some antagonist power residing in another part. Thus the power of 
the two houses of parliament to frame laws is checked by the king's 
negative; that if law subversive of regal government should obtain 
the consent of parliament, the reigning prince, by interposing his pre- 
rogative, may save the necessary rights and authority of his station. 
On the other hand, the arbitrary application of this negative is checked 
by the privilege which parliament possesses of refusing supplies of 
money to the exigencies of the king's administration. The constitu- 
tional maxim, " that the king can do no wrong," is balanced by another 
maxim not less constitutional, "that the illegal commands of the 
king do not justify those who assist, or concur, in carrying them into 
execution ;" and by a second rule, subsidiary to this, " that the acts of 
the crown acquired not a legal force until authenticated by the sub- 
scription of some of its great officers." The wisdom of this contri- 
vance is worthy of observation. As the king could not be punished 
without a civil war, fhe constitution exempts his person from trial 
or account; but, lest this impunity should encourage a licentious 
exercise of dominion, various obstacles are opposed to the private will 
of the sovereign, when directed to illegal objects. The pleasure of the 
crown must be announced with certain solemnities, and attested by 
certain officers of state. In some cases, the royal order must be signi- 
fied by a secretary of state ; in others, it must pass under the privy 
seal ; and in many under the great seal. And when the king's com- 
mand is regularly published, no mischief can be achieved by it, 
without the ministry and compliance of those to whom it is directed. 
Now all who either concur in an illegal order, by authenticating its 



BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 227 

publication with their seal or subscription, or who in any manner assist 
m carrying it into execution, subject themselves to prosecution and 
punishment for the part they have taken; and are not permitted to 
plead or produce the command of the king in justification of their 
obedience.* But farther : the power of the crown to direct the mili- 
tary force of the kingdom is balanced by the annual necessity of re- 
sorting to parliament for the maintenance and government of that 
force. The power of the king to declare war is checked by the privi- 
lege of the House of Commons to grant or withold the supplies by 
which the war must be carried on. The king's choice of his minis- 
ters is controlled by the obligation he is under of appointing those 
men to offices in the state who are found capable of managing the 
affairs of his government with the two houses of parliament. Which 
consideration imposes such a necessity upon the crown, as hath in a 
great measure subdued the influence of favoritism : insomuch that it 
is become no uncommon spectacle in this country to see men promo- 
ted by the king to the highest offices and richest preferments w^hich 
he has in his power to bestow, who have been distinguished by their 
opposition to his personal inclinations. 

By the balance of interest^ which accompanies and gives efficacy to 
the balance of power ^ is meant this;— -that the respective interests of 
the three estates of the empire are so disposed and adjusted, that 
whichever of the three shall attempt any encroachment, the other 
two will unite in resisting it. If the king should endeavor to extend 
his authority, by contracting the powder and privileges of the Commons, 
the House of Lords would see their own dignity endangered by every 
advance which the Crown made to independency upon the resolutions 
of parliament. The admission of arbitrary power is no less formida- 
ble to the grandeur of aristocracy than it is fatal to the liberty of the 
republic; that is, it would reduce the nobility from the hereditary share 
they possess in the national councils, in which their real greatness 
consists, to the being made a part of the empty pageantry of a despotic 
court. On the other hand, if ihe House of Commons should intrench 
upon the distmct province, or usurp the established prerogative of the 
crown, the House of Lords would receive an instant alarm from every 
new stretch of popular power. In every contest in which the king 
may be engaged with the representative body in defence of his estab- 
lished share of authority, he will find a sure ally in the collective 
power of the nobility. An attachment to the monarchy, from which 
they derive their own distinction; the allurements of a court, in the 
habits and with the sentiments of which they have been brought up ; 

•Among the checks which parliament holds over the administration of public 
affairs, I forbear to mention the practice of addressing the king, to know by whose 
advice he resolved upon a particular measure ; and of punishing the authors of that 
advice, for the counsel they had given. Not because I think this method either un- 
constitutional or improper ; but for this reason, that it does not so much subject the 
king to the control of parliament as it supposes him to be already in subjection. For 
if the king were so far out of the reach of the resentment of the House of Commons, 
as to be able with safety to refuse the information requested, or to take upon himself 
the responsibility inquired after, there must be an end of all proceedings founded in 
this mode of application. 



228 BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 

their hati-ed of equality and of all levelling pretensions, which may ulti- 
mately effect the privileges, or even the existence of their order ; in 
short, every principle and every prejudice which are wont to actuate 
human conduct, will determine their choice to the side and support of 
the crown. Lastly, if the nobles themselves should attempt to revive 
the superiorities which their ancestors exercised under the feudal con- 
stitution, the king and the people would alike remember how the one 
had been insulted and the other enslaved by that barbarous tyranny. 
They would forger the natural opposition of their views and inclina- 
tions, when they saw themselves threatened with the return of a domi- 
nation which was odious and intolerable to both. 

The reader will have observed that, in describing the British consti- 
tution, little notice has been taken of the House of Lords. The 
proper use and design of this part of the constitution are the follow- 
ing : First, to enable the king, by his right of bestowing the peerage, 
to reward the servants of the public, in a manner most grateful to 
them, and at a small expense to the nation : secondly, to fortify 
the power and to secure the stability of regal government, by an 
order of men naturally allied to its interests : and, thirdly, to answer 
a purpose which, though of superior importance to the other two, 
does not occur so readily to our observation * namely, to stem the 
progress of popular fury. Large bodies of men are subject to sudden 
frenzies. Opinions are sometimes circulated among a multitude with- 
out proof or examination, acquiring confidence and reputation merely 
by being repeated from one to another : and passions founded upon 
these opinions, diffusing themselves with a rapidity which can nei- 
ther be accounted for nor resisted, may agitate a country with the 
most violent commotions. Now the only way to stop the fermentation 
is to divide the mass* that is, to erect different orders in the commu- 
nity, with separate prejudices and interests. And this may occasion- 
ally become the use of an hereditary nobility, invested with a share 
of legislation. Averse to those prejudices which actuate the minds 
of the vulgar; accustomed to contemn the clamor of the populace; 
disdaining to receive laws and opinions from their inferiors in rank; 
they will oppose resolutions which are founded in the folly and vio- 
lence of the lower part of the community. Were the voice of the 
people always dictated by reflection ; did every man, or even one 
man in a hundred, think for himself, or actually consider the measure 
he was about to approve or censure ; or even were the common people 
tolerably steadfast in the judgment which they formed, I should hold 
the interference of a superior order not only superfluous but wrong; 
for when everything is allowed to difference of rank and education, 
which the actual state of these advantages deserves, that, after all, is 
most likely to be right and expedient which appears to be so to the 
separate judgment and decision of a great majority of the nation; 
at least, that, in general, is right for them which is agreeable to 
their fixed opinions and desires. But when we observe what is urgeJ 
as the pubUc opinion, to be, in truth, the opinion only, or perhaps the 
feigned profession, of a few crafty leaders; that the numbers who 



BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 229 

join in the cry serve only to swell and multiply the sound, without 
any accession of judgment or exercise of understanding ] and that 
oftentimes the wisest counsels have been thus overborne by tumult 
and uproar: — we may conceive occasions to arise in which the com- 
monwealth may be saved by the reluctance of the nobility to adopt 
the caprices, or to yield to the vehemence, of the common people. In 
expecting this advantage from an order of nobles, we do not suppose 
the nobility to be more unprejudiced than others : we only suppose 
that their prejudices will be different from, and may occasionally, 
counteract those of others. 

If the personal privileges of the peerage, which are usually so 
many injuries to the rest of the community, be restrained, I see little 
inconveniency to the increase of its number ; for it is only dividing 
the same quantity of power among more hands, which is rather favo- 
rable to public freedom than otherwise. 

The admission of a small number of ecclesiastics into the House of 
Lords is but an equitable compensation to the clergy for the exclu- 
sion of their order from the House of Commons. They are a set of 
men considerable by their number and property, as well as by their 
influence and the duties of their station ; yet, while every other pro- 
fession has those among the national representatives, who being con- 
versant in the same occupation, are able to state,' and naturally dis- 
posed to support the rights and interests of the class and calling to 
which they belong, the clergy alone are deprived of this advantage ; 
which hardship is made up to them by introducing the prelacy into 
parliament : and if bishops, from gratitude or expectation, be more 
obsequious to the will of the crown than those who possess great 
temporal inheritances, they are properly inserted into that part of the 
constitution from which much or frequent resistance to the measures 
of government is not expected. 

I acknowledge that I perceive no sufficient reason for exem.pting 
the persons of members of either house of parliament from arrest for 
debt. The counsels or suffrage of a single senator, especially of one 
who in the management of his own affairs may justly be suspected of 
a want of prudence or honesty, can seldom be so necessary to those 
of the public as to justify a departure from that wholesome policy by 
which the laws of a commercial state punish and stigmatize insolven- 
cy. But, whatever reason may be pleaded for their personal immuni- 
ty, when this privilege of parliament is extended to domestics and re- 
tainers, or when it is permitted to impede or delay the course of judi- 
cial proceedings, it becomes an absurd sacrifice of equal justice to ima- 
ginary dignity. 

There is nothing in the British Constitution so remarkable as the ir- 
regularity of the popular representation. The House of Commons 
consists of five hundred and fifty-eight members, of whom two hundred 
are elected by seven thousand constituents ] so that a majority of 
these seven thousand, without any reasonable title to superior weight 
or influence in the state, may, under certain circumstances, decide a 
question against the opinion of as many millions. Or, to place the 



230 BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 

same object in another point of view : If my estate be situated in 
one county of the kingdom, I possess the ten-thousandth part of a 
single representative; if in another, the thousandth; if in a particu- 
lar district, I may be one in twenty who choose two representatives : 
if in a still more favored spot, I may enjoy the right of appointing 
two myself. If I have been born, or dwell, or have served an appren- 
ticeship in one town, I am represented in the national assem^bly by 
two deputies, in the choice of whom 1 exercise an actual and sensi- 
ble share of power : if accident has thrown my birth, or habitation, 
or service into another town, I have no representative at all, noi 
more power or concern in the election of those who make the laws 
by which I am governed, than if I was a subject of the Grand Seig- 
nor : — and this partiality subsists without any pretence whatever of 
merit or of propriety, to justify the preference of one place to another. 
Or, thirdly, to describe the state of national representation as it exists 
in reality, it may be affirmed, I believe, with truth, that about one 
half of the House of Com^mons obtain their seats m that assembly by 
the election of the people, the other half by purchase, or by the 
nomination of single proprietors of great estates. 

This is a flagrant incongruity in the constitution \ but it is one of 
those objections which strike most forcibly at first sight. The effect 
of all reasoning upon the subject is to diminish the first impression; 
on which account it deserves the more attentive examination, that 
we may be assured, before we adventure upon a reformation, that the 
magnitude of the evil justifies the danger of the experiment. In a 
few remarks that follow, we would be understood, in the first place, 
to decline all conference with those who wish to alter the form ot 
government of these kingdoms. The reformers with whom we have 
to do are they who, while they change this part of the system, would 
retain the rest. If any Englishman expect more happiness to his 
country under a republic, he may very consistently recommend anew- 
modeling of elections to parliament ; because, if the king and House 
of Lords were laid aside, the present disproportionate representation 
would produce nothing but a confused and ill -digested oligarchy. 
In like manner, we wave a controversy with those writers who insist 
upon representation as a natural right :* we consider it so far only 
as a right at all as it conduces to public utility ; that is, as it con- 
tributes to the establishment of good laws, or as it secures to the 
people the just administration of these laws. These effects depend 
upon the disposition and abilities of the national counsellors. 
Wherefore, if men the most likely by their qualifications to know 
and to promote the public interest be actually returned to parliament, 
it signifies little who return them. If tke most proper persons be 

♦If this right be natural, no doubt it must be equal ; and the right, we may add, of 
one sex, as well as of the other. Whereas every plan of representation that we have 
heard of begins by excluding the votes of women ; thus cutting off, at a single stroke, 
©ne half of the public from aright which is asserted to be inherent in all ; a right too, 
as some represent it, not only universal, but unalienable, and indefeasible, and im- 
prescriptible. 



BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 231 

elected, what matters it by whom they are elected ? At least, no pru- 
dent statesman would subvert long-established or even settled rules 
of representation, without a prospect of procuring wiser or better 
representatives. This, then, being well observed, let us, before we 
seek to obtain anything more, consider duly what we already have. 
We kave a House of Commons composed of five hundred and fifty- 
eight members, in which number are found the most considerable 
land holders and merchants of the kingdom ] the heads of the army, 
the navy, and the law; the occupiers of great offices in the state; to- 
gether with many private individuals, eminent by their knowledge, 
eloquence, or activity. Now, if the country be not safe in such hands, 
in whose may it confide its interests? If such a number of such men 
be liable to the influence of corrupt motives, what assembly of men 
will be secure from the same danger ] Does any new scheme of rep- 
resentation promise to collect together more wisdom, or to produce 
firmer integrity % In this view of the subject, and attending not to 
ideas of order and proportion, (of which many minds are much ena- 
mored,) but to eflfects alone, w^e may discover just excuses for those 
parts of the present representation which appear to a hasty ob- 
server most exceptionable and absurd. It should be remembered, as a 
maxim extremely applicable to this subject, that no order or assembly 
of men whatever can long maintain their place and authority in a 
mixed government, of which the members do not individually possess 
a respectable share of personal importance. Now, whatever may be 
the defects of the present arrangement, it infallibly secures a great 
weight of property to the House of Commons, by rendering many seats 
in that house accessible to men of large fortunes, and to such men 
alone. By which means those characters are engaged in the defence 
of the separate rights and interests of this branch of the legislature 
that are best able to support its claims. The constitution of most of 
the small boroughs, especially the burgage tenure, contributes, 
though undesignedly, to the same effect : for the appointment of the 
representatives we find commonly annexed to certain great inheri- 
tances. Elections purely popular are in this respect uncertain : in 
times of tranquillity, the natural ascendency of wealth will prevail : 
but when the minds of men are inflamed by political dissensions, this 
influence often yields to more impetuous moty^es. The variety of 
tenures and qualifications, upon which the right of voting is founded, 
appears to me a recommendation of the mode which now subsists, as 
it tends to introduce into parliament a corresponding mixture of cha- 
racters and professions. It has been long observed that conspicuous 
abilities are most frequently found with the representatives of small 
boroughs. And this is nothing more than what the laws of human 
conduct might teach us to expect : When such boroughs are set to 
sale, those men are likely to become purchasers who are enabled by 
their talents to make the best of their bargain : when a seat is not 
sold, but given by the opulent proprietor of a burgage tenure, the 
patron finds his own interest consulted by the reputation and abili- 
ties of the member whom he nominates. If certain of the nobility 



232 BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 

hold the appointment of some part of the House of Commons, it serves 
to mamtain that alliance between the two branches of the legislature 
which no good citizen would wish to see dissevered : it helps to keep 
the government of the country in the House of Commons, in which it 
would not perhaps long continue to reside, if so powerful and wealthy 
a part of the nation as the peerage compose were excluded from all 
share and interest in its constitution. If there be a few boroughs so cir- 
cumstanced as to lie at the disposal ol the crown, while the number of 
such is known, and small, they maybe tolerated with little danger. 
For where would be the impropriety or the inconveniency, if the 
king at once should nominate a limited number of his servants to 
seats in parliament ; or, what is the same thing, if seats in parlia- 
ment were annexed to the possession of certain of the most efficient 
and responsible offices in the state ? The present representation, 
after all these deductions, and under the confusion in w^hich it con- 
fessedly lies, is still in such a degree popular; or rather, the repre- 
sentatives are so much connected with the mass of the community by 
a society of interests and passions, that the will of the people, wheii 
it is determined, permanent, and general, almost always at length 
prevails. 

Upon the whole, in the several plans which have been suggested, 
of an equal or a reformed representation, it will be difficult to discover 
any proposal that has a tendency to throw more of the bu.siness of 
the nation into the House of Commons, or to collect a set of men 
more fit to transact that business, or in general more interested 
in the national happiness and prosperity. One consequence, 
however, may be expected from these projects, namely, "less 
flexibility to the influence of the crown." And since the dimi- 
nution of this influence is the declared and perhaps the sole design 
of the various schemes that have been produced, whether for regu- 
lating the elections, contracting the duration, or for purifying the 
constitution of parliament by the exclusion of placemen and pension- 
ers ; it is obvious to remark, that the more apt and natural, as well 
as the more safe and quiet way of attaining the same end, would be 
by a direct reduction of the patronage of the crown, which might be 
effected to a certain extent without hazarding farther consequences. 
Superfluous and exorbitant emoluments of office may not only be 
suppressed for the present, but provisions of law be devised which 
should for the future restrain within certain limits the number and 
value of the offices in the donation of the king. 

But while we dispute concerning different schemes of reformation, 
all directed to the same .end, a previous doubt occurs in the debate, 
whether the end itself be good, or safe; — whether the influence so 
loudly complained of can be destroyed, or even much diminished, 
without danger to the state. While the zeal of some men beholds 
this influence with a jealousy -which nothing but its entire abolition 
can appease, many wise and virtuous politicians deem a considera- 
ble portion of it to be as necessary a part of the British constitution, 
as any other ingredient in the composition ; — to be that, indeed, 



BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 233 

which gives cohesion and solidity to the whole. Were the measures 
of government, say they, opposed from nothing hut principle, govern- 
ment ought to have nothing but the rectitude of its measures to 
support them : but since opposition springs from other motives, gov- 
ernment muTst possess an influence to counteract these motives ; to 
produce, not a bias of the passions, but a neutrality; — it must have 
some weight to cast into the scale, to set the balance even. It is the 
nature of power always to press upon the boundaries which confine 
it. Licentiousness, faction, envy, impatience of control, or inferi- 
ority ; the secret pleasure of mortifying the great, or the hope of 
dispossessing them ; a constant willingness to question and thwart 
whatever is dictated or even proposed by another; a disposition 
common to all bodies of men, to extend the claims and authority of 
their orders ; above all, that love of power, and of showing it, which 
resides more or less in every human breast, and which, in pojmlar 
assemblies, is inflamed, like every other passion, by communication 
and encouragement : these motives, added to private designs and re- 
sentments, cherished also by popular acclamation, and operating 
upon the great share of power already possessed by the House of 
Commons, might induce a majority, or at least a large party of men 
in that assembly, to unite in endeavoring to draw to themselves the 
whole government of the state ; or, at least, so to obstruct the con- 
duct of public affairs, by a wanton and perverse opposition, as to 
render it impossible for the wisest statesman to carry forward the 
business of the nation with success or satisfaction. 

Soma passages of our national history afford grounds for these 
apprehensions. Before the accession of James the First, or at least 
during the reigns of his three immediate predecessors, the govern- 
ment of England was a government by force ; that is, the king 
carried his measures in parliament by intimidation. 

A sense of personal danger kept the members of the House of 
Commons in subjection. A conjunction of fortunate causes delivered, 
atleast, the parliament and nation from slavery. That overbearing 
system which had declined in the hands of James expired early in the 
reign of his son. After the Restoration, there succeeded in its place, 
and, since the Revolution, has been methodically pursued, the more 
successful expedient of influence. Now we remember what passed 
between the loss of terror and the establishment of influence. The 
transactions of that interval, whatever we may think of their occa- 
sion or effect, no friend of regal government would wish to see re- 
vived. But the affairs of this kingdom afford a more recent attesta- 
tion to the same doctrine. In the British colonies of North America, 
the late assemblies possessed much of the power and constitution of 
our House of Commons. The king and government of Great Britain 
held no patronage in the country which could create attachment and 
influence sufiicient to counteract that restless arrogating spirit, which, 
in popular assemblies, when left to itself, will never brook an authority 
that checks and interferes with its own. To this cause, excited 
perhaps by some unseasonable provocations, we may attribute, as to 



234 BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 

theK true and proper original (we will not say the misfortunes, but) 
the changes that have taken place in the British empire. The admo- 
nition which such examples suggest will have its weight with those 
who are content with the general frame of the Enghsh constitution, 
and who consider stability among the first perfections of any govern- 
ment. 

We protest, however, against any construction by which what is 
here said shall be attempted to be applied to the justification ol 
bribery, or of any clandestine reward or solicitation whatever. The 
very secrecy of such negotiations confesses or begets a consciousness 
of guilt ] which, when the mind is once taught to endure without un- 
easiness, the character is prepared for every compliance ] and there 
is the greater danger in these corrupt practices, as the extent of their 
operation is unlimited and unknown. Our apology relates solely to 
that influence which results from the acceptance or expectation of 
public preferments. Nor does the influence which we defend require 
any sacrifice of personal probity. In political, above all other subjects, 
the arguments, or rather the conjectures, on each side of the question, 
are often so equally poised, that the wisest judgments may be held in 
suspense : these I call subjects of indifference. But again ; when the 
subject is not indifferent in itself, it will appear such to a great part 
of those to whom it is proposed, for want of information, or reflection, 
or experience, or of capacity to collect and weigh the reasons by which 
either side is supported. These are subjects of apparent indifference. 
This indifference occurs still more frequently in personal contests ; in 
which we do not often discover any reason of public utility for 
the preference of one competitor to another. These cases compose 
the province of influence •, that is, the decision in these cases vvil^ 
inevitably be determined by influence of some sort or other. The 
only doubt is, what influence shall be admitted. If you remove the 
influence of the crown, it is only to make way for influence from a 
different quarter. If motives of expectation and gratitude be with- 
drawn, other motives will succeed in their place, acting probably in an 
opposite direction, but equally irrelative and external to the proper 
merits of the question. There exist, as we have seen, passions in 
the human heart, which will always make a strong party against the 
executive power of a mixed government. According as the disposi- 
tion of parliament is friendly or adverse to the recommendation of the 
crown in matters which are really or apparently indifferent, as indiffe- 
rence hath been now explained, the business of the empire will be 
transacted with ease and convenience, or embarrassed with endless 
contention and difficulty. Nor is it a conclusion founded in justice? 
or warranted by experience, that because men are induced by views 
of interest to yield their consent to measures concerning which their 
judgment decides nothing, they may be brought by the same influence 
to act in deliberate opposition to knowledge and duty. Whoever 
reviews the operations of government in this country since the Revo- 
lution, w411 find few even of the most questionable measures of admin- 
ietration about which the best instructed judgment might not have 



AD.dlNISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 235 

doubted at the time ; but of which we may affirm with certainty, they 
were indifferent to the grdtitest part of those w^ho concurred in them. 
From the success, or the facility with which they who dealt out the 
patronage of the crown carried measures like these, ought we to 
conclude that a similar application of honors and emoluments 
would procure the consent of parliaments to counsels evidently detri- 
mental to the common welfare % Is there not, on the contrary, more 
reason to fear that the prerogative, if deprived oi influence, would 
not be long able to support itself '? For when we reflect upon the 
power of the House of Commons to extort a compliance with its reso- 
lutions from the other parts of the legislature; or to put to death the 
constitution by a refusal of the annual grants of money to the support 
of the necessary functions of government ] — when we reflect also 
what motives there are which, in the vicissitudes of political interests 
and passions, may one day arm and point this power against the 
executive magistrate ; — when we attend to these considerations, 
we shall be led perhaps to acknowledge, that there is not more of 
paradox than of truth in that important, but much decried apothegm, 
"that an independent parliament is incompatible with the existence 
of the monarchy." 



CHAPTER Yin. 

OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 

The first maxim of a free state is, that the laws be made by one 
set of men, and administered by an other 3 in other words, that the 
legislative and judicial characters be kept separate. When these 
offices are united in the same person or assembly, particular laws are 
made for particular cases, springing oftentimes from partial motives, 
and directed to private ends : while they are kept separate, general 
laws are made by one body of men, without foreseeing whom they 
may effect ; and when made, must be applied by the other, let them 
affect whom they will. 

For the sake of illustration, let it be supposed, in this country, 
either that, parliaments being laid aside, the courts of Westmin- 
ster Hall made their own laws; or that the two houses of parlia- 
ment, with the king at their head, tried and decided causes at their 
bar: it is evident, in the first place, that the decisions of such a judi- 
cature would be so many laws ] and, in the second place, that, when 
the parties and the interests to be affected by the laws were known, 
the inclinations of the law-makers would inevitably attach on one 
hide or the other ] and that where there were neither any fixed rules 
to regulate their determinations, nor any superior power to control 
their proceedings, these inclinations would interfere with the integrity 
of public justice. The consequence of which must be, that the 
subjects of such a constitution would live either without any 
constant laws, that is, without any known pre-established rules of 



236 ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 

adjudication whatever: or under laws made for particular persons, 
and partaking of the contradictions and* iniquity of the motives to 
which they owed their origin. 

Which dangers, by the division of the legislative and judicial func- 
tions, are in this country effectually provided against. Parliament 
knows not the individuals upon whom its acts will operate ; it has no 
cases or parties before it ; no private designs to serve : consequently, its 
resolutions will be suggested by the consideration of universal effects 
and tendencies, which always produces impartial, and commonly 
advantageous regulations. When laws are made, courts of justice, 
whatever be the disposition of the judges, must abide by them : for 
the legislative being necessarily the supreme power of the state, the' 
judicial and every other power is accountable to that : and it cannot 
be doubted that the persons who possess the sovereign authority of 
government will be tenacious of the laws which they themselves pre- 
scribe, and sufficiently jealous of the assumption of dispensing any 
legislative power by any others. 

This fundamental rule of civil jurisprudence is violated in the case 
of acts of attainder or confiscation, in bills of pains and penalties, 
and in all ex post facto laws whatever, in which parliament exercises 
the double office of legislature and judge. And whoever either un- 
derstands the value of the rule itself, or collects the history of those 
instances in which it has been invaded, will be induced, I believe, to 
acknowledge that it had been wiser and safer never to have departed 
from it. He will confess at least, that nothing but the most mani- 
fest and immediate peril of the commonwealth will justify a repeti- 
tion of these dangerous examples. If the laws in being do not 
punish an offender, let him go unpunished* let the legislature, ad- 
monished of the defect of the laws, provide against the commission 
of future crimes of the same sort. The escape of one delinquent can 
never produce so much harm to the community as may arise from 
the infraction of a rule upon which the purity of public justice, and 
the existence of civil liberty, essentially depend. 

The next security for the impartial administration of justice, espe- 
cially in decisions to which government is a party, is the independency 
of the judges. As protection against every illegal attack upon the 
rights of the subject by the servants of the crown is to be sought for 
from these tribunals, the judges of the land become not unfrequently 
the arbitrators between the king and the people , on which account 
they ought to be independent of either * or, what is the same thing, 
equally dependent upon both : that is, if they be appointed by the 
one, they should be removable only by the other. This was the policy 
which dictated that memorable improvement in our constitution, by 
which the judges, who before the Revolution held their offices during 
the pleasure of the king, can now be deprived of them only by an ad- 
dress from both houses of parliament ; as the most regular, solemn, 
and authentic way by which the dissatisfaction of the people can be 
expressed. To make this independency of the judges complete, the 
public salaries of their office ought not only to be certain, both m 



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE 237 

amount and continuance, but so liberal as to secure their integrity 
from the temptation of secret bribes ; which liberality will answer 
also the farther purpose of preserving their jurisdiction from contempt, 
and their characters from suspicion ; as well as of rendering the office 
worthy of the ambition of men of eminence in their profession. 

A third precaution to be observed in the formation of courts of jus- 
tice is, that the number of the judges be small. For, besides that the 
violence and tumult inseparable from large assemblies are inconsistent 
with the patience, method, and attention requisite in judicial investi- 
gation ; besides that all passions and prejudices act with augmented 
force upon a collected multitude; besides these objections, judges, 
when they are numxerous. divide the shame of an unjust determina- 
tion ; they shelter themselves under one another's example ; each 
man thinks his own character hid in the crowd ; for which reason the 
judges ought always to be so few as that the conduct of each may be 
conspicuous to public observation ; that each may be responsible in 
his separate and particular reputation for the decisions in which he 
concurs. The truth of the above remark has been exemplified in this 
country, in the effects of that wise regulation which transferred the 
trial of parliamentary elections from the House of Commons at large 
to a select committee of that house, composed of thirteen members. 
This alteration, simply by reducing the number of the judges, and, in 
consequence of that reduction, exposing the judicial conduct of each 
to public animadversion, has given to a judicature, which had been 
long swayed by interest and solicitation, the solemnity and virtue of 
the most upright tribunals. I should prefer an even to an odd num- 
ber of judges, and four to almost any other number : for in this num- 
ber, besides that it sufficiently consults the idea of separate responsi- 
bility, nothing can be decided but by a majority of three to one : and 
when we consider that every decision establishes a perpetual prece- 
dent, we shall allow that it ought to proceed from an authority not 
less than this. If the court be equally divided, nothing is done ; things 
remain as they were; with some inconveniency, indeed, totheparties, 
but without the danger to the public of a hasty precedent. 

A fourth requisite in the constitution of a court of justice, and 
equivalent to many checks upon the discretion of judges, is, that its 
proceedings be carried on in public, ajyeitzs forihus; noi only before 
a promiscuous concourse of by-standers, but in the audience of the 
whole profession of the law. The opinion of the bar concerning 
what passes will be impartial ; and will commonly guide that of the 
public. The most corrupt judge will fear to indulge his dishonest 
wishes in the presence of such an assembly: he must encounter, what 
few can support, the censure of his equals and companions, together 
with the indignation and reproaches of his country. 

Something is also gained to the public by appointing two or three 
courts of concurrent jurisdiction, that it may remain in the option of the 
suitor to which he will resort. By this means, a tribunal which may 
happen to be occupied by the ignorant or suspected judges will be de- 
serted for others that possess more of the confidence of the nation. 



238 ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 

But, lastly, if several courts, co-ordinate to and independent of each 
other, subsist together in the country, it seems necessary that the ap- 
peals from all of them should meet and terminate in the same judica- 
ture ; in order that one supreme tribunal, by whose final sentence all 
others are bound and concluded, may superintend and preside over the 
rest. This constitution is necessary for two purposes ; — to preserve 
a uniformity in the decisions of inferior courts, and to maintain to 
each the proper limits of its jurisdiction. Without a common superior, 
different courts might establish contradictory rules of adjudication, 
and the contradiction be final and without remedy \ the same question 
might receive opposite determinations, according as it was brought be- 
fore one court or another, and the determination in each be ultimate and 
irreversible. A common appellant jurisdiction prevents or puts an end 
to this confusion. For when the judgments upon appeals are consistent 
(which may be expected, while it is the same court which is at last re- 
sorted to,) the different courts from which the appeals are brought will 
be reduced to a like consistency with one another. Moreover, if ques- 
tions arise between courts independent of each other, concerning the 
extent and boundaries of their respective jurisdiction, as each will be 
desirous of enlarging its own, an authority which both acknowledge can 
alone adjust the controversy. Such a power, therefore, must reside 
somewhere, lest the rights and repose of the country be distracted by 
the endless opposition and mutual encroachments of its courts of justice. 

There are two kinds of judicature : the one, where the oflSce of the 
judge is permanent in the same person, and consequently where the 
judge is appointed and knovyn long before the trial ; the other, where 
the judge is determined by lot at the time of the trial, and for that turn 
only. The one may be called a fixed^ the other a casual judicature. 
From the former may be expected those qualifications which are pre- 
ferred and sought for in the choice of judges, and that knowledge and 
readiness which result from experience in the office. But then, as the 
judge is known beforehand, he is accessible to the parties ; there exists 
a possibility of secret management and undue practices : or, in contests 
between the crown and the subject, the judge appointed by the crown 
may be suspected of partiality to his patron, or of entertaining inclina- 
tions favorable to the authority from which he derives his own. The 
advantage attending the second kind of judicature is indifferency ; th^ 
defect, the want of that legal science which produces uniformity and 
justice in legal decisions. The construction of English courts of law, 
in which causes are tried by a jury, with the assistance of a judge, com- 
bines the two species with peculiar success. This admirable contri- 
vance unites the wisdom of a fixed with the integrity of a casual judi- 
cature ; and avoids, in a great measure, the inconveniences of both. 
The judge imparts to the jury the benefit of his erudition and experi- 
ence ; the jury, by their disinterestedness, check any corrupt partialities 
which previous application may have produced in the judge. If the 
determination were left to the judge, the party might suffer under the 
superior interest of his adversary : if it were left to an uninstructed jury 
his rights would be in still greater danger, from the ignorance of those 



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 239 

who were to decide upon them. The present wise admixture of chance 
and choice, in the constitution of the court in which his cause is tried, 
guards him equally against the fear of injury from either of these causes. 

In proportion to the acknowledged excellency of this mode of trial, 
every deviation from it ought to be watched with vigilance, and ad- 
mitted by the legislature with caution and reluctance. Summary con- 
victions before justices of the peace, especially for offences against the 
game laws ; courts of conscience ; extending the jurisdiction of courts 
of equity ; urging too far the distinction between questions of law and 
matters of fact : — are all so many infringements upon this great charter 
of public safety. 

Nevertheless, the trial by jury is sometimes found inadequate to the 
administration of equal justice. This imperfection takes place chiefly 
in disputes in which some popular passion or prejudice intervenes; as 
where a particular order of men advance claims upon the rest of the 
community, which is the case of the clergy contending for tithes ; or 
where an order of men are obnoxious by their profession, as are officers 
of the revenue, bailiffs, bailiffs' followers, and other low ministers of the 
law ; or where one of the parties has an interest in common with the 
general interest of the jurors, and that of the other is opposed to it, as 
in contests between landlords and tenants, between lords of manors and 
the holders of estates under them ; or, lastly, where the minds of men 
are inflamed by political dissensions or religious hatred. These preju- 
dices act most powerfully upon the common people ; of which ordei 
juries are made up. The force and danger of them are also increased 
by the very circumstance of taking juries out of the county in which 
the subject of dispute arises. In the neighborhood of the parties, the 
cause is often prejudged : and these secret decisions of the mind proceed 
commonly more upon sentiments of favor or hatred — upon some opinion 
concerning the sect, family, profession, character, connexions, or circum- 
stances of the parties — than upon any knowledge or discussion of the 
proper merits of the question. More exact justice would, in many in- 
stances, be rendered to the suitors, if the determination were left entirely 
to the judges ] provided we could depend upon the same purity of con- 
duct, when the power of these magistrates was enlarged, which they 
have long manifested in the exercise of a mixed and restrained autho- 
rity. But this is an experiment too big with public danger to be 
hazarded. The effects, however, of some local prejudices might be 
safely obviated by a law empowering the court in which the action 
is brought to send the cause to trial in a distant county^ the ex- 
penses attending the change of place always falling upon the party who 
applied for it. 

There is a second division of courts of justice, which presents a new 
alternative of difficulties. Either one, two, or a few sovereign courts 
may be erected in the metropolis^ for the whole kingdom to resort to ; 
or courts of local jurisdiction may be fixed in various provinces and 
districts of the empire. Great, though opposite, inconveniences attend 
each arrangement. If the court be remote and solemn, it becomes, by 
these very qualities, expensive and dilatory : the expense is unavoida^ 



240 ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 

bly increased when witnesses, parties, and agents must be brought to 
attend from distant parts of the country : and, where the whole judicial 
business of a large nation is collected in a few superior tribunals, it 
will be found impossible, even if the prolixity of forms which retards 
the progress of causes were removed, to give a prompt hearing to every 
complaint, or an immediate answer to any. On the other hand, if, to 
remedy these evils, and to render the administration of justice cheap and 
speedy, domestic and summary tribunals be erected in each neighbor- 
hood, the advantage of such courts will be accompanied with all the 
dangers of ignorance and partiality, and with the certain mischief of 
confusion and contrariety in their decisions. The law of England, by 
its circuit, or itinerary courts, contains a provision for the distribution 
of private justice, in a great measure relieved from both these objec- 
tions. As the presiding magistrate comes into the country a stranger 
to its prejudices, rivalships, and connexions, he brings with him none 
of those attachments and regards which are so apt to pervert the courts 
of justice when the parties and the judges inhabit the same neighbor- 
hood. Again ; as this magistrate is usually one of the judges of the 
supreme tribunals of the kingdom, and has passed his life in the study 
and administration of the laws, he possesses, it may be presumed, those 
professional qualifications which befit the dignity and importance of 
his station. Lastly, as both he and the advocates who accompany him 
in his circuit are employed in the business of those superior courts (to 
which also their proceedings are amenable,) they will naturally conduct 
themselves by the rules of adjudication which they have applied or 
learned there ] and by this means maintain, what constitutes a principal 
perfection of civil government, one law of the land in every part and 
listrict of the empire. 

Next to the constitution of courts of justice, we are naturally led to 
consider the maxims which ought to guide their proceedings ] and upon 
this subject the chief inquiry will be, how far, and for what reasons, 
it is expedient to adhere to former determinations: or whether it be 
necessary for judges to attend to any other consideration than the 
apparent and particular equity of the case before them. Now, al- 
though to assert that precedents established by one set of judges ought 
to be incontrovertible by their successors in the same jurisdiction, or 
by those who exercise a higher, would be to attribute to the sentence 
of those judges all the authority we ascribe to the most solemn acts 
of the legislature ; yet the general security of private rights, and of 
civil life, requires that such precedents, especially if they have been 
confirmed by repeated adjudications, should not be overthrown with- 
out a detection of manifest error, or without some imputation of dis- 
honesty upon the court by whose judgment the question was first de- 
cided. And this deference to prior decisions is founded upon two 
reasons : first, that the discretion of judges may be bound down by 
positive rules: and, secondly, that the subject, upon every occasion i/i 
which his legal interest is concerned, may know beforehand how ^o 
act, and what to expect. To set judges free from any obligation to 
conform themselves to the decisions of their predecessors, would be to 



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 241 

lay open a latitude of judging with which no description of men can 
safely be intrusted : it would be to allow space for the e^ ercise of 
those concealed partialities, which, since they cannot by ar y human 
policy be excluded, ought to be confined by boundaries and landmarks. 
It is in vain to allege that the superintendency of parliament is always 
at hand to control and punish abuses of judicial discretion. By what 
rules can parliament proceed ? How shall they pronounce a decision 
to be wrong where there exists no acknowledged measure or standard 
of what is right ; which, in a multitude of instances, would be the 
case, if prior determinations were no longer to be appealed to ? 

Diminishing the danger of partiality is one thing gained by adhering 
to precedents; but not the principal thing. The subject of every 
system of laws must expect that decision in his own case which he 
knows that others have received in cases similar to his. If he expect 
not this, he can expect nothing. There exists no other rule or princi- 
ple of reasoning by which he can foretell, or even conjecture, the event 
of a judicial contest. To remove therefore the grounds of this expec- 
tation, by rejecting the force and authority of precedents, is to entail 
upon the subject the worst property of slavery — to have no assurance 
of his rights, or knowledge of his duty. The quiet also of the country, 
as well as the confidence and satisfaction of each man's mind, requires 
•uniformity in judicial proceedings. Nothing quells a spirit of litiga- 
tion like despair of success; therefore nothing so completely puts an 
3nd to lawsuits as a rigid adherence to known rules of adjudication. 
While the event is uncertain, which it ever must be while it is uncer- 
tain whether former determinations upon the same subject will be fol- 
lowed or not, lawsuits will be endless and innumerable : men will 
commonly engage in them, either from the hope of prevailing in their 
claims, which the smallest chance is sufficient to encourage, or with 
,he design of intimidating their adversary by the terrors of a dubious 
.itigation. When justice is rendered to the parties, only half the busi- 
ness of a court of justice is done : the more important part of its office 
remains ; — to put an end, for the future, to every fear and quarrel and 
expense upon the same point; and so to regulate its proceedings, that 
not only a doubt once decided may be stirred no more, but that the 
whole train of lawsuits, which issue from one uncertainty, may die 
with the parent question. Now this advantage can be attained only 
by considering each decision as a direction to succeeding judges. And 
it should be observed, that every departure from former determinations, 
especially if they have been often repeated or long submitted to, shakes 
the stability of all legal title. It is not fixing a point anew; it is 
leaving everything unfixed. For by the same stretch of power by 
which the present race of judges take upon them to contradict the 
judgment of their predecessors, those who try the question next may 
set aside theirs. 

From an adherence, however, to precedents, by which so much is 
gained to the public, two consequences arise which are often lamented; 
the hardships of particular determinations, and the intricacy of the law 
as a science. To the first of these complaints we must apply this 

L 



242 ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 

reflection : — *• That uniformity is of more importance than equity, in 
proportion as a general uncertainty would be a greater evil than par- 
ticular injustice." The second is attended with no greater inconveni 
ency than that of erecting the practice of the law into a separate pro- 
fession : which this reason, w^e allow, makes necessary ] for if we 
attribute so much authority to precedents, it is expedient that they be 
known in every cause, both to the advocates and to the judge : This 
knowledge cannot be general, since it is the fruit oftentimes of labo- 
rious research, or demands a memory stored with long-collected 
erudition. 

To a mind revolving upon the subject of human jurisprudence there 
frequently occurs this question : — Why, since the maxims of natural 
justice are few and evident, do there arise so many doubts and contro- 
versies in their application 1 Or, in other words, how comes it to pass, 
that although the principles of the law of nature be simple, and for 
the most part sufficiently obvious, there should exist nevertheless, in 
every system of municipal laws, and in the actual administration of 
relative justice, numerous uncertainties and acknowledged difficulty ? 
Whence, it may be asked, so much room for litigation, and so many 
subsisting disputes, if the rules of human duty be neither obscure nor 
dubious ? If a system of morality, containing both the precepts of 
revelation and the deductions of reason, may be comprised within the 
compass of one moderate volume; and the moralist be able, as he 
pretends, to describe the rights and obligations of mankind in all the 
different relations they may hold to one another; what need of those 
codes of positive and particular institutions, of those tomes of statutes 
and reports, which require the employment of a long life even to peruse ? 
And this question is immediately connected with the argument which 
has been discussed in the preceding paragraph; for, unless there be 
found some greater uncertainty in the law ol nature, or what may be 
called natural equity, when it comes to be applied to real cases and 
to actual adjudication, than what appears in the rules and principles 
of the science, as delivered in the writings of those who treat of the 
subject, it were better that the determination of every cause should be 
left to the conscience of the judge, unfettered by precedents and_ au- 
thorities ; since the very purpose for w^hich these are introduced is to 
give a certainty to judicial proceedings, which such proceedings would 
want without them. 

Now, to account for the existence of so many sources of litigation, 
notwithstanding the clearness and perfection of natural justice, it 
should be observed, in the first place, that treatises of morality always 
suppose facts to be ascertained ; and not only so, but the intention like- 
wise of the parties to be known and laid bare. For example : when 
we pronounce that promises ought to be fulfilled in that sense in 
which the promiser apprehended, at the time of making the promise, 
the other party received and understood it ; the apprehension of one 
side, and the expectation of the other, must be discovered, before this 
rule can be reduced to practice, or applied to the determination of any 
actual dispute. Wherefore the discussion of facts which the moral 



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 243 

ist supposes to be settled, the discovery of intentions which he pre- 
sumes to be known, still remain to exercise the inquiry of courts of 
justice. And as these facts and intentions are often to be inferrciJ, 
or rather conjectured, irom obscure indications, from suspicious testi- 
mony, or from a comparison of opposite and contending probabilities, 
they afford a never-failing supply of doubt and litigation. For whicn 
reason, as hath been observed in a former part of this work, the 
science of morality is to be considered rather as a direction to the 
parties, who are conscious of their own thoughts and motives and 
designs, to which consciousness the teacher of morality constantly 
appeals ; than as a guide to the judge, or to any third person, whose 
arbitration must proceed upon the rules of evidence, and maxims of 
credibility, with which the moralist has no concern. 

Secondly, There exists a multitude of cases, in which the law of 
nature, that is, the law of public expediency, prescribes nothing, 
except that some certain rule be adhered to, and that the rule actually 
established be preserved: it either being indifferent what rule obtains, 
or, out of many rules, no one being so much more advantageous than 
the rest as to recompense the inconveniency of an alteration. In all 
such cases the law of nature sends us to the law of the land. She 
directs that either some fixed rule be introduced by an act of the 
legislature, or that the rule which accident, or custom, or common 
consent hath already established, be steadily maintained. Thus, in 
the descent of lands, or the inheritance of personals from intestate 
proprietors, whether the kindred of the grandmother or of the great- 
grandmother shall be preferred in the succession ; whether the 
degrees of consanguinity shall be computed through the common an- 
cestor, or from him ; whether the widow shall take a third or a 
moiety of her husband's fortune ; whether sons shall be preferred to 
daughters, or the elder to the younger ] whether the distinction of age 
shall be regarded among sisters as well as between brothers; in these, 
and in a great variety of questions which the same subject supplies^ 
the law of nature determines nothing. The only answer she returns 
to our inquiries is, that some certain and general rule be laid down 
by public authority; be obeyed when laid dow^n; and that the quiet 
of the country be not disturbed ; nor the expectations of heirs frustrated 
by capricious innovations. This silence or neutrality of the law of 
nature, which we have exemplified in the case of intestacy, holds 
concerning a great part of the questions that relate to the right or 
acquisition of property. Recourse, then, must necessarily be had to 
statutes, or precedents, or usage, to fix what the law of nature has 
left loose. The interpretation of these statutes, the search after pre- 
cedents, the investigation of customs, compose therefore an unavoida- 
ble, and at the same time a large and intricate portion of forensic 
business. Positive constitutions, or judicial authorities, are in like 
manner wanted to give precision to many things which are in their 
nature indeterminate. The age of legal discretion ] at what time of 
life a person shall be deemed competent to the performance of any 
act which may bind his property ; whether at twenty or twenty-one. 



244 ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 

or earlier or later, or at some point of time between these years ; can 
only be ascertained by a positive rule of the society to which the 
party belongs The line has not been drawn by nature ; the hum.an 
understanding advancing to maturity by insensible degrees, and its 
progress varying in diflerent individuals. Yet it is necessary, for the 
sake of mutual security, that a precise age be fixed, and that what is 
fixed be known to all. It is on these occasions that the intervention 
of law supplies the inconstancy of nature. Again, there are other 
things which are perfectly arbitrary^ and capable of no certainty but 
what is given to them by positive regulation. It is fit that a limited 
time should be assigned to defendants, to plead to the complaints al- 
leged against them ) and also, that the default of pleading w^ithin a 
certain time should be taken for a confession of the charge : but to 
how many days or months that term should be extended, though ne- 
cessary to be known with certainty, cannot be known at all by any 
information which the law of nature affords. And the same remark 
seems applicable to almost all those rules of proceeding which con- 
stitute what is called the practice of the court ; as they cannot be 
traced out by reasoning, they must be settled by authority. 

Thirdly, In contracts, whether expressed or implied, which involve 
a great number of conditions ; as in those which are entered into be- 
tween masters and servants, principals and agents* many also of 
merchandise, or for works of art 3 in some likewise which relate to 
the negotiation of money or bills, or to the acceptance of credit or se- 
curity ; the original design and expectation of the parties was, that 
both sides should be guided by the course and custom of the country 
in transactions of the same sort. Consequently, when these come to 
be disputed, natural justice can only refer to that custom. But as such 
customs are not always sufficiently uniform or notorious, but often to 
be collected from the production and comparison of instances and 
accounts repugnant to one another; and each custom being only that, 
after all, which among a variety of usages seems to predominate ] we 
have here also ample room for doubt and contest. 

Fourthly, As the law of nature, founded in the very construction 
of human society, which is formed to endure, through a series of per- 
ishing generations, requires that the just engagements a man enters 
into should continue in force beyond his own life ; it follows that the 
private rights of persons frequently depend upon what has been trans- 
acted in times remote from the present, by their ancestors or predeces- 
sors, by those under whom they claim, or to whose obligations they 
have succeeded. Thus the questions which usually arise between 
lords of manors and their tenants, between the king and those who 
claim royal franchises, or between them and the persons affected 
by these franchises, depend upon the terms of the original grant In 
like manner, every dispute concerning tithes, in which an exemption 
or composition is pleaded, depends upon the agreement which took 
place between the predecessor of the claimant and the ancient owner 
of the land. The appeal to these grants and agreements is dictated by 
natural equity, as well as by the municipal law : but concerning the 



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 245 

existence, or the conditions, of such old covenants doubts will perpe- 
tually occur, to which the law of nature aifords no solution. The loss 
or decay of records, the perishableness of living memory, the corrup- 
tion and carelessness of tradition, all conspire to multiply uncertainties 
upon this head : what cannot be produced or proved must be left to 
loose and fallible presumption. Under the same head may be included 
another topic of altercation — the tracing out of boundaries which time, 
or neglect, or unity of possession, or mixture of occupation, has con- 
founded or obliterated. To which should be added, a difficulty which 
often presents itself in disputes concerning rights of way both public 
and private, and of those easements which one man claims in another 
man's property; namely, that of distinguishing, after a lapse of years, 
the use of an indulgence from the exercise of a right. 

Fifthly, The quantity or extent of an injury, even when the cause 
and author of it are known, is often dubious and undefined. If the 
injury consist in the loss of some specific right, the value of the right 
measures the amount of the injury : but what a man may have suf- 
fered in his person from an assault j in his reputation by slander ; oi 
in the comfort of his life, by the seduction of a wife or a daughter; 
or what sum of money shall be deemed a reparation for damages such 
as these ; cannot be ascertained by any rules which the law of nature 
supplies. The law of nature commands that reparation be made ; and 
adds to her command, that, when the aggressor and sufferer disagree, 
the damage be assessed by authorized and indifferent arbitrators. 
Here, then, recourse must be had to courts of law, not only with the 
permission, but in some measure by the direction of natural justice. 

Sixthly, When controversies arise in the interpretation of written 
laws, they for the most part arise upon some contingency which the 
composer of the law did not foresee or think of. In the adjudication 
of such cases, this dilemma presents itself : If the laws be permitted to 
operate only upon the cases which were actually contemplated by the 
law-makers, they will always be found defective : if they be extended 
to every case to which the reasoning, and spirit, and expediency of the 
provision seems to belong, without any farther evidence of the inten- 
tion of the legislature, we shall allow to the judges a liberty of apply- 
ing the law, which fall very little short of the power of making it. 
If a literal construction be adhered to, the law will often fail of its end : 
If a loose and vague exposition be admitted, the law might as well 
have never been enacted; for this license will bring back into the sub- 
ject all the discretion and uncertainty which it was the design of the 
legislature to take away. Courts of justice are, and always must be, 
embarrassed by these opposite difficulties ; and as it never can be 
known beforehand in what degree either consideration may prevail in 
the mind of the judge, there remains an unavoidable cause of doubt, 
and a place for contention. 

Seventhly, The deliberations of courts of justice upon every new 
quesli :n are encumbered with additional difficulties, in consequence of 
the authority which the judgment of the court possesses as a prece- 
dent to future judicatures : which authority appertains not only to the 



•^46 ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 

conclusions the court delivers, but to the principles and arguments 
upon which they are built. The view of this effect makes it neces- 
sary for a judge to look beyond the case before him ; and, besides the 
attention he owes to the truth and justice of the cause between the 
parties, to reflect w^hether the principles, and maxims, and reasonin.sr, 
which he adopts and authorizes, can be applied with safety to all 
cases which admit of a comparison with the present. The decision ol 
the cause, were the effects of the decision to stop there, might be easy ; 
but the consequence of establishing the principle which such a deci- 
sion assumes may be difficult, though of the utmost importance, to be 
foreseen and regulated. 

Finally, After all the certainty and rest that can be given to points 
of law, either by the inter])Osition of the legislature or the authority 
of precedents, one principal source of disputation, and into which in- 
deed the greater part of legal controversies may be resolved, will re- 
main still, namely, " the competition of opposite analogies." When 
a point of law has been once adjudged, neither that question, nor any 
which completely, and in all its circumstances, corresponds with that can 
be brought a second time into dispute ; but questions arise, which re- 
semble this only indirectly and in part, in certain views and circum- 
stances, and which may seem to bear an equal or a greater aflinity to 
other adjudged cases ; questions which can be brought within any 
fixed rule only by analogy, and which hold a relation by analogy to 
different rules. It is by the urging of the different analogies that the 
contention of the bar is carried on : and it is in the comparison, adjust- 
ment, and reconciliation of them with one another ; in the discerning 
of such distinctions ; and in the framing of such a determination, as 
may either save the various rules alleged in the cause, or, if that be 
impossible, may give up the weaker analogy to the stronger • that the 
sagacity and wisdom of the court are seen and exercised. Among a 
thousand instances of this, we may cite one of general notoriety, in 
-he contest that has lately been agitated concerning literary property. 
The personal industry which an author expends upon the composition 
of his work bears so near a resemblance to that by which every other 
kind ol property is earned, or deserved, or acquired : or rather there 
exists such a correspondency between what is created by the study of 
a man's mind and the production of his labor in any other way of ap- 
plying it, that he seems entitled to the same exclusive, assignable, and 
perpetual right in both ] and that right to the same protection of law. 
This was the analogy contended for on one side. On the other hanu, 
a book, as to the authors right in it, appears similar to an invention 
of art, as a machine, an engine, a medicine: and since the law permits 
these to be copied, or imitated, except, where an exclusive use or sale 
is reserved to the inventor by patent, the same libert}^ should be allowed 
in the publication and sale of books. This was the analogy maintain- 
ed by the advocates of an open trade. And the competition of these 
opposite analogies constituted the difficulty of the case, as far as the 
same was argued, or adjudged, upon principles of common law. One 
example may serve to illustrate our meaning : but whoever takes up 



ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 247 

a volume of reports will find most of the arguments it contains capa- 
ble of the same analysis ; although the analogies, it must be confessed, 
are sometimes so entangled as not to be easily unravelled, or even 
perceived. 

Doubtful and obscure points of law are not, however, nearly so nu- 
merous as they are apprehended to be. Out of the multitude of causes 
which, in the course of each year, are brought to trial in the metro- 
polis, or upon the circuits, there are few in which any point is reserv- 
ed for the judgment of superior courts. Yet these few contain all the 
doubts with which the law is chargeable ; for as to the rest, the un- 
certainty, as hath been shown above, is not in the law, but in the 
means of human information. 



There are two particularities in the judicial constitution of this 
country which do not carry with them that evidence of their pro 
priety which recommends almost every other part of the system. Tb' 
first of these is the rule which requires that juries be unanimous \\\ 
their verdicts. To expect that twelve men, taken by lot out of a p.n 
miscuous multitude, should agree in their opinion upon points pro- 
fessedly dubious, and upon which oftentimes the wisest judgments 
might be holden in suspense ; or to suppose that any real unanimifij 
or change of opinion in the dissenting jurors could be procured ly 
confining them until they all consented to the same verdict, bespeaks 
more of the conceit of a barbarous age tir<an of the policy whicl\ could 
dictate such an institution as that of juries. Nevertheless, the eilVcts 
of this rule are not so detrimental as the rule itself is unreasonable : 
in criminal prosecutions, it operates considerably in favor of the 
prisoner; for if a juror finds it necessary to surrender to the obstinacy 
of others, he will much more readily resign his opinion on the side c i 
mercy than of condemnation : in civil suits it adds weight to the direc- 
tion of the judge : for when a conference with one another does no; 
seem likely to produce in the jury the agreement that is necessary, 
they will naturally close their disputes by a common submission to 
the opinion delivered from the bench. However, there seems to be 
less of the concurrence of separate judgments in the same conclusion, 
consequently less assurance that the conclusion is founded in reasons 
of apparent truth and justice, than if the decision were left to a plu- 
rality, or to some certain majority of voices. 

The second circumstance in our constitution, which, however it may 
succeed in practice, does not seem to have been suggested by any in- 
telligible fitness in the nature of the thing, is the choice that is made 
of the House of Lords as a court of appeal from every civil court of 
judicature in the kingdom ; and the last also and highest appeal to 
which the subject can resort. There appears to be nothing in the 
constitution of that assembly ; in the education, habits, character, or 
professions of the members who compose it; in the mode of their ap- 
pointment, or the right by which they succeed to their places in it, that 



248 OF CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 

should qualify them for this arduous office ; except, perhaps, that the 
elevation of their rank and fortune affords a security against the offer 
and influence of small bribes. Officers of the army and navy, cour- 
tiers, ecclesiastics : young men who have just attained the age of 
twenty-one, and who have passed their youth in the dissipation and 
pursuits which commonly accompany the possession or inheritance of 
great fortunes ; country gentlemen occupied in the management of 
their estates, or in the care of their domestic concerns and family in- 
terests, the greater part of the assembly born to their station, that is, 
placed in it by chance ; most of the rest advanced to the peerage for 
services, and from motives utterly unconnected with legal erudition : 
these men compose the tribunal to which the constitution intrusts the 
interpretation of her laws, and the ultimate decision of every dispute 
between her subjects. These are the men assigned to review judg- 
ments of Jaw pronounced by sages of the profession, who have spent 
their lives in the study and practice of the jurisprudence of their coun- 
try. Such is the order which our ancestors have established. The 
effect only proves the truth of this maxim ; — " That when a single 
institution is extremely dissonant from other parts of the system to 
which it belongs, it will always And some way of reconciling itself to 
the analogy which governs and pervades the rest." By constantly 
placing in the House of Lords some of the most eminent and experi- 
enced lawyers in the kingdom; by calling to their aid the advice of 
the judges, when any abstract question of law awaits their determina- 
tion ; by the almost implicit and undisputed deference which the un- 
informed pail ot the house-irad it necessary to pay to the learning of 
their colleagues ; the appeal to the House of Lords becomes in fact an 
appeal to the collected wisdom of our supreme courts of justice; re- 
ceiving indeed solemnity, but little perhaps of direction, from the pres- 
ence of the assembly in which it is heard and determined. 

These, however, even if real, are minute imperfections. A politi- 
cian who should sit down to delineate a plan for the dispensation of 
public justice guarded against all access to influence and corruption, 
and bringing together the separate advantages of knowledge and im- 
partiality, would find, when he had done, that he had been transcribing 
the judicial constitution of England. And it may teach the most dis- 
contented among us to acquiesce in the government of his country, to 
reflect that the pure, and wise, and equal administration of the laws 
forms the first end and blessing of social union ; and that this blessing 
is enjoyed by him in a perfection which he will seek in vain in any 
other nation in the world. 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 

The proper end of human punishment is not the satisfaction of jus- 
tice, but the prevention of crimes. By the satisfaction of justice, I 



OF CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 249 

mean the retribution of so much pain for so much guilt ; which is the 
dispensation we expect at the hand of God, and which we are accus- 
tomed to consider as the order of things that perfect justice dictates and 
requires. In w^hat sense, or whether with truth in any sense, justice 
may be said to demand the punishment of offenders, I do not now in- 
quire ; but I assert, that this demand is not the motive or occasion of 
human punishment. What would it be to the magistrate, that offen- 
ces went altogether unpunished, if the impunity of the offenders were 
followed by no danger or prejudice to the commonwealth ? The fear 
lest the escape of the criminal should encourage him, or others by his 
example, to repeat the same crime, or to commit different crimes, is the 
sole consideration which authorizes the infliction of punishment by 
human laws. Now that, whatever it be, which is the cause and end 
of the punishment, ought undoubtedly to regulate the measure of its 
severity. But this cause appears to be founded, not in the guilt of 
the offender, but in the necessity of preventing the repetition of the 
offence : and hence results the reason that crimes are not by any 
government punished in proportion to their guilt, nor in all cases ought 
to be so, but in proportion to the difficulty and the necessity of pre- 
venting them. Thus the stealing of goods privately out of a shop, 
may not, in its moral quality, be more criminal than the stealing of 
them out of a house; yet, being equally necessary and more difficult 
to be prevented, the law, in certain circumstances, denounces against 
it a severer punishment. The crime must be prevented by some means 
or other ] and consequently, whatever means appear necessary to this 
end; whether they be proportionable to the guilt of the criminal or not, 
are adopted rightly, because they are adopted upon the principle which 
alone justifies the infliction of punishment at all. From the same con- 
sideration it also follows, that punishment ought not to be employed, 
much less rendered severe, when the crime can be prevented by any 
other means. Punishment is an evil to which the magistrate resorts 
only from its being necessary to the prevention of a greater. This 
necessity does not exist when the end may be attained, that is, when 
the public may be defended from the effects of the crime by any other 
expedient. The sanguinary laws w^hich have been made against 
counterfeiting or diminishing the gold coin of the kingdom might be 
just, until the method of detecting the fraud, by weighing the money, 
was introduced into general usage. Since that precaution was prac- 
ticed, these laws have slept ] and an execution under them at this day 
would be deemed a measure of unjustifiable severity. The same prin- 
ciple accounts for a circumstance which has been often censured as an 
absurdity in the penal laws of this and of most modern nations, namely, 
that breaches of trust are either not punished at all, or punished 
with less rigor than other frauds. Wherefore is it, some have asked, 
that a violation of confidence, which increases the guilt, should miti- 
gate the penalty ?• This lenity, or rather forbearance of the laws is 
founded in the most reasonable distinction. A due circumspection in 
the choice of the persons whom they trust ; caution in limiting the 
extent of that trust ; or the requiring of sufficient security for the faith- 
L 2 



250 CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 

ful discharge of it • will commonly guard men from injuries of this 
description ; and the law will not interpose its sanctions to protect 
negligence and credulity, or to supply the place of domestic care and 
prudence. To be convinced that the law proceeds entirely upon this 
consideration, we have only to observe, that where the confidence is 
unavoidable — where no practicable vigilance could watch the offender, 
as in the case of theft committed by a servant in the shop or dwelling- 
house of his master, or upon property to which he must necessarily 
have access — the sentence of the law is not less severe, and its execu- 
tion commonly more certain and rigorous, than if no trust at all had 
intervened. 

It is in pursuance of the same principle, which pervades indeed the 
whole system of penal jurisprudence, that the facility with which any 
species of crimes is perpetrated has been generally deemed a reason 
for aggravating the punishment. Thus, sheep stealing, horse stealing, 
the stealing of cloth from tenters or bleaching grounds, by our laws, 
subject the offenders to sentence of death : not that these crimes are 
in their nature more heinous than many simple felonies which are 
punished by imprisonment or transportation, but because the property 
being more exposed, requires the terror of capital punishment to pro- 
tect it. This severity would be absurd and unjust if the guilt of the 
offender were the immediate cause and measure of the punishment; 
but it is a consistent and regular consequence of the supposition, that 
the right of punishment results from the necessity of preventing the 
crime : for if this be the end proposed, the severity of the punishment 
must be increased in proportion to the expediency and the difficulty of 
attaining this end ; that is, in a proportion compounded of the mischief 
of the crime, and of the ease with which it is executed. The difficulty 
of discovery is a circumstance to be included in the same considera- 
tion. It constitutes indeed, with respect to the crime, the facility of 
which we speak. By how much, therefore, the detection of an offen- 
der is more rare and uncertain, by so much the more severe must be 
the punishment when he is detected. Thus the writing of incendiary 
letters, though in itself a pernicious and alarming injury, calls for a 
more condign and exemplary punishment, by the very obscurity with 
which the crime is committed. 

From the justice of God, we are taught to look for a gradation of 
punishment exactly proportioned to the guilt of the offender; when 
therefore, in assigning the degrees of human punishment, we introduce 
considerations distinct from that of guilt, and a proportion so varied 
by external circumstances that equal crimes frequently undergo un- 
equal punishments, or the less crime the greater ; it is natural to de- 
mand the reason why a different measure of punishment should be 
expected from God, and observed by man ; why that rule, which befits 
the absolute and perfect justice of the deity should not be the rule 
which aught to be pursued and imitated by human laws. The solu- 
tion of this difficulty must be sought for in those peculiar attributes 
of the Divine nature which distinguish the dispensations of Supreme 
Wisdom from the proceedings of human judicature. A Being whose 



CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 251 

knowledge penetrates every concealment, from the operation of whose 
will no art or flight can escape, and in whose hands punishment is 
sure; such a being may conduct the moral government of his creation, 
in the best and wisest manner, by pronouncing a law that every crime 
shall finally receive a punishment proportioned to the guilt which it 
contains, abstracted from any foreign consideration whatever; and 
may testify his veracity to the spectators of his judgments, by carry- 
ing this law into strict execution. But when the care of the public 
safety is intrusted to men whose authority over their fellow creatures 
is limited by defects of power and knowledge ; from whose utmost 
vigilance and sagacity the greatest offenders often lie hid; whose 
wisest precautions and speediest pursuit may be eluded by artifice or 
concealment ; a different necessity, a new rule of proceeding, results 
from the very imperfection of their faculties. In their hands, the un- 
certainty of punishment must be compensated by the severity. The 
ease with which crimes are committed or concealed must be counter- 
acted b)" additional penalties and increased terrors. The very end 
for which human government is established requires that its regula- 
tions be adapted to the suppression of crimes. This end, whatever it 
may do in the plans of infinite wisdom, does not, in the designation 
of temporal penalties, always coincide with the proportionate punish- 
ment of guilt. 

There are two methods of administering penal justice. 

The first method assigns capital punishment to few offences, and 
inflicts it invariably. 

The second method assigns capital punishment to many kinds 
of offences, but inflicts it only upon a few examples of each kind. 

The latter of w^hich two methods has been long adopted in this 
country, where, of those who receive sentence of death, scarcely one 
in ten is executed. And the preference of this to the former method 
seems to be founded in the consideration, that the selection of proper 
objects for capital punishment principally depends upon circumstan- 
ces, which however easy to perceive in each particular case after the 
crime is committed, it is impossible to enumerate or define beforehand, 
or, indeed, to ascertain, with that exactness which is requisite in 
legal descriptions. Hence, although it be necessary to fix by precise 
rules of law the boundary on one side, that is, the limit to which the 
punishment may be extended ; and also that nothing less than the 
authority of the whole legislature be suffered to determine that boun- 
dary and assign these rules ; yet the mitigation of punishment, the 
exercise of lenity, may without danger be intrusted to the executive 
magistrate, whose discretion will operate upon those numerous, un- 
foreseen, mutable, and indefinite circumstances, both of the crime and 
the criminal, which constitute or qualify the malignity of each 
offence. Without the power of relaxation lodged in a living authori- 
ty, either some offenders would escape capital punishment whom the 
public safety required to suffer ; or some would undergo this punish- 
ment w^here it was neither deserved nor necessary. For if judgment 
of death were reserved for one or two species of crimes only (which 



252 CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 

would probably be the case if that judgment was intended to be ex»*- 
cuted without exception.) crimes might occur of the most dangerous 
example, and accompanied with circumstances of heinous aggravation, 
which did not fall within aiiy description of offences that the laws 
had made capital, and which consequently could not receive the pun- 
ishment their own malignity and the public safety required. What is 
worse, it would be known beforehand that such crimes might be 
committed without danger to the offender's life. On the other hand, 
if to reach these possible cases, the whole class of offences to which 
they belong be subject to pains of death, and no power of remitting 
this severity remain anywhere, the execution of the laws will become 
more sanguinary than the public compassion would endure, or than is 
necessary to the general security. 

The law of England is constructed upon a different and a better 
polic5^ By the number of statutes creating capital offences, it sweeps 
into the net every crime which, under any possible circumstances, 
may merit the punishment of death; but when the execution of this 
sentence comes to be deliberated upon, a small proportion of each 
class are singled out, the general character, or the peculiar aggrava- 
tions, of whose crimes render them fit examples of public justice. By 
this expedient few actually suffer death, while the dread and danger 
of it hang over the crimes of many. The tenderness of the law cannot 
be taken advantage of. The life of the subject is spared as far as the 
necessity of restraint and intimidation permits ; yet no one will ad- 
venture upon the commission of any enormous crime, from a know- 
ledge that the laws have not provided for its punishment. The 
wisdom and humanity of this design furnish a just excuse for the 
multiplicity of capital offences, which the laws of England are accused 
of creating beyond those of other countries. The charge of cruelty 
is answered by observing, that these laws were never meant to be 
carried into indiscriminate execution ; that the legislature, when it 
establishes its last and highest sanctions, trusts to the benignity of 
the crown to relax their severity, as often as circumstances appear to 
palliate the offence, or even as often as those circumstances of aggra- 
vation are wanting which render this rigorous interposition necessary. 
Upon this plan, it is enough to vindicate the lenity of the laws, that 
some instances are to be found in each class of capital crimes which 
required the restraint of capital punishment, and that this restraint 
could not be applied without subjecting the whole class to the same 
condemnation. 

There is however one species of crimes, the making of which capi- 
tal can hardly, I think, be defended even upon the comprehensive 
principle just now stated — I mean that of privately stealing from the 
person. As every degree of force is excluded by the description of 
the crime, it will be difficult to assign an example, where either 
the amount or circumstances of the theft place it upon a level with 
those dangerous attempts to which the punishment of death should 
be confined. It will be still more difficult to show that, without 
gross and culpable negligence on the part of the sufferer, such ex 



CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 253 

amples can ever become so frequent as to make it necessary to 
constitute a class of capital offences of very wide and large ex- 
tent. 

The prerogative of pardon is properly reserved to the chief magis- 
trate. The power of suspending the laws is a privilege of too high a 
nature to be committed to many hands, or to those of any inferior 
office in the state. The king also can best collect the advice by 
which his resolutions shall be governed ; and is at the same time re- 
moved at the greatest distance from the influence of private motives. 
But let this power be deposited where it will, the exercise of it ought 
to be regarded, not as a favor to be yielded to solicitation, granted to 
friendship, or, least of all, to be made subservient to the conciliating 
or gratifying of political attachments, but as a judicial act ; as a delibera- 
tion to be conducted with the same character of impartiality, with the 
same exact and diligent attention to the proper merits and circumstan- 
ces of the case, as that which the judge upon the bench was expected 
to maintain and show in the trial of the prisoner's guilt. The ques- 
tions, whether the prisoner be guilty^ and whether, being guilty, he 
ought to be executed, are equally questions of public justice. The 
adjudication of the latter question is as much a function of magistracy, 
as the trial of the former. The public v>^e]fare is interested in both. 
The conviction of an offender should depend upon nothing but the 
proof of his guilt : nor the execution of the sentence upon anything 
besides the quality and circumstances of his crime. It is necessary to 
the good order of society, and to the reputation and authority of govern- 
ment, that this be known and believed to be the case in each part of 
the proceeding. Which reflections show that the admission of extrin- 
sic or oblique considerations in dispensing the power of pardon is a 
crime, in the authors and advisers of such unmerited partiality, of the 
same nature with that of corruption in a judge. 

Aggravations, which oughc to guide the magistrate in the selection 
of objects of condign punishment, are principally these three — repeti- 
tion, cruelty, combination. The first two, it is manifest, add to every 
reason upon v/hich the justice or the necessity of rigorous measurei 
can be founded; and with respect to the last circumstance, it may be 
observed, that when thieves and robbers are once collected into gangs, 
their violence becomes more formidable, the confederates more despe- 
rate, and the difficulty of defending the public against their depreda- 
tions much greater than in the case of solitary adventurers. Which 
several considerations compose a distinction that is properly adverted 
to in deciding upon the fate of convicted malefactors. 

In crimes, however, which are perpetrated by a multitude, or by 3 
gang, it is proper to separate, in the punishment, the ringleader from 
his followers, the principal from his accomplices, and even the person 
who struck the blow, broke the lock, or first entered the house, from 
those who joined him in the felony; not so much on account of any 
distinction in the guilt of the offenders, as for the sake of casting an 
obstacle in the way of such confederacies, by rendering it difficult for 
the confederates to settle who shall begin the attack, or to find a man 



254 CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 

among their number willing to expose himself to greater danger than 
his associates. This is another instance in which the punishment 
which expediency directs does not pursue the exact proportion of the 
crime. 

Injuries effected by terror and violence are those which it is the first 
and chief concern of legal government to repress ; because their extent 
is unlimited * because no private precaution can protect the subject 
against them ; because they endanger life and safety as well as pro- 
perty ] and, lastly, because they render the condition of society wretch- 
ed, by a sense of personal insecurity. These reasons do not apply 
to frauds which circumspection may prevent ] which must wait for 
opportunity ; which can proceed only to certain limits ; and by the 
apprehension of which, although the business of life be incommoded, 
life itself is not made miserable. The appearance of this distinction 
has led some humane writers to express a wish that capital punish- 
ments might be confined to crimes of violence. 

In estimating the camparative malignancy of crimes of violence, 
regard is to be had not only to the proper and intended mischief of 
crime, but to the fright occasioned by the attack, to the general alarm 
excited by it in others, and to the consequences which may attend 
future attempts of the same kind. Thus, in affixing the punishment 
of burglary, or of breaking into dwelling houses by night, we are to 
consider not only the peril to which the most valuable property is ex- 
posed by this crime, and which may be called the direct mischief of it, 
but the danger also of murder in case of resistance, or for the sake of 
preventing discovery ] and the universal dread with which the silent 
and defenceless hours of rest and sleep must be disturbed, were 
attempts of this sort to become frequent ] and which dread alone, even 
without the mischief which is the object of it, is not only a public evil, 
but almost of all evils the most insupportable. These circumstances 
place a difference between the breaking into a dwelling house by day 
and by night; which difference obtains in the punishment of the 
offence by the law of Moses, and is probably to be found in the 
judicial codes of most countries, from the earliest ages to the present. 

Of frauds or of injuries which are effected without force, the most 
noxious kinds are, forgeries, counterfeiting or diminishing of the coin, 
and the stealing of letters in the course of their conveyance ] inas- 
much as these practices tend to deprive the public of accommodations, 
w^hich not only improve the conveniences of social life, but are es- 
sential to the prosperity and even the existence of commerce. Of 
these crimes it may be said, that although they seem to affect pro- 
perty alone, the mischief of their operation does not terminate there. 
For let it be supposed that the remissness or lenity of the laws 
should in any country suffer offences of this sort to grow into such a 
frequency as to render the use of money, the circulation of bills, or 
the public conveyance of letters no longer safe or practicable ; 
what would follow, but that every species of trade and of activity 
must decline under these discouragements ] the sources of subsis- 
tence fail, by which the inhabitants of the country are supported ; 



CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 255 

the country itself, where the intercourse of civil life was so endan- 
gered and defective, be deserted ] and that, besides the distress and 
poverty which the loss of employment would produce to the in- 
dustrious and valuable part of the existing community, a rapid de- 
population must take place, each generation becoming less numerous 
than the last ; till solitude and barrenness overspread the land ; until 
a desolation similar to what obtains in many countries of Asia, which 
were once the most civilized and frequented parts of the world, succeed 
in the place of crowded cities, of cuhivated fields, of happy and w^ell 
peopled regions. When therefore we carry forward our views to the 
more distant, but not less certain, consequences of these crimes, we per- 
ceive that, though no living creature be destroyed by them, yet human 
liie is diminished : that an offence, the particular consequence of which 
deprives only an individual of a small portion of his property, and 
which even in its general tendency seems to do nothing more than ob- 
struct the enjoyment of certain public conveniences, may nevertheless, 
by its ultimate effects, conclude in the laying waste of human existence. 
This observation will enable those who regard the divine rule of '' life 
for life, and blood for blood," as the only authorized and justifiable 
measure of capital punishment, to perceive, w^ith respect to the effects 
and quality of the actions, a greater resemblance than they suppose to 
exist between certain atrocious frauds and those crimes which attack 
personal safety. 

In the case of forgeries, there appears a substantial difference be- 
tween the forging of bills of exchange, or of securities which are cir- 
culated, and of which the circulation and currency are found to serve 
and facilitate valuable purposes of commerce ; and the forging of bonds, 
leases, mortgages, or of instruments which are not commonly trans- 
ferred from one hand to another; because, in the former case, credit is 
necessarily given to the signature, and without that credit the negotia- 
tion of such property could not be carried on, nor the public utility, 
sought from it, be attained : in the other case, all possibility of deceit 
might be precluded, by a direct communication between the parties, or 
by due care in the choice of their agents, with little interruption to 
business, and without destroying or much encumbering the uses for 
which these instruments are calculated. This distinction I apprehend 
to be not only real, but precise enough to afiord a line of division be- 
tween forgeries, which, as the law now stands, are almost universally 
capital, and punished with undistinguishing severity. 

Perjury is another crime of the same class and magnitude. And 
when we consider what reliance is necessarily placed upon oaths * 
that all judicial decisions proceed upon testimony; that consequently 
there is not a right that a man possesses of which false witnesses may 
not deprive him; that reputation, property, and life itself lie open to 
the attempts of perjury; that it may often be committed without a 
possibility of contradiction or discovery ; that the success and pre- 
valency of this vice tend to introduce the most grievous and fatal in- 
justice into the administration of human affairs, or such a distrust of 
testimony as must create universal embarrassment and confusion; 



266 CRIiVlES AND PUNISHMENTS. 

when we reflect upon these mischiefs, we shall be brought probably 
to agree with the opinion of those who contend that perjury, in its 
punishment, especially that which is attempted in solemn evidence; 
and in the face of a court of justice, should be placed upon a leve' 
with the most flagitious frauds. 

The obtaining of money by secret threats, whether we regard the 
difficulty with which the crime is traced out, the odious imputations 
to which it may lead, or the profligate conspiracies that are sometimes 
formed to carry it into execution, deserves to be reckoned among the 
worst species of robbery. 

The frequency of capital executions in this country owes its ne- 
cessity to three causes ; much liberty, great cities, and the want of a 
punishment short of death, possessing a sufficient degree of terror. 
And if the taking away of the life of malefactors be more rare in other 
countries than in ours, the reason will be found in some difference in 
these articles. The liberties of a free people, and still more the 
jealousy with which these liberties are watched, and by which they 
are preserved, permit not those precautions and restraints, that in- 
spection, scrutiny and control, which are exercised with success in 
arbitrary governments. For example, neither the spirit of the laws, 
nor of the people, will suffer the detention or confinement of suspected 
persons without proofs of their guilt, which it is often impossible to 
obtain ; nor will they allow that masters of families be obhged to re- 
cord and render up a description of the strangers or inmates whom 
they entertain ; nor that an account be demanded at the pleasure of 
the magistrate of each man's time, employment, and means of sub- 
sistence ; nor securities to be required when these accounts appear 
unsatisfactory or dubious ; nor men to be apprehended upon the 
mere suggestion of idleness or vagrancy ; nor to be confined to certain 
districts ; nor the inhabitants of each district to be made responsible 
for one another's behavior; nor passports to be exacted from all per- 
sons entering or leaving the kingdom ; least of all will they tolerate 
the appearance of an armed force, or of military law , or suffer the 
streets and public roads to be guarded and patrolled by soldiers; or, 
lastly, intrust the police with such discretionary powers as may make 
sure of the guilty, however they involve the innocent. These ex- 
pedients, although arbitrary and rigorous, are many of them, effectual ; 
and, in proportion as they render the commission or concealment oi 
crimes more difficult, they subtract from the necessity of severe punish- 
ment. Great cities multiply crimes by presenting easier opportunities, 
and more incentives to libertinism, which in low life is commonly the 
introductory stage to other enormities ; by collecting thieves and rob- 
bers into the same neighborhood, which enables them to form com- 
munications and confederacies that increase their art and courage, as 
well as strength and wickedness; but principally by the refuge the;y 
afford to villainy in the means of concealment, and of subsisting in 
secrecy, which crowded towns supply to men of every description. 
These temptations and facilities can only be counteracted by adding 
to the number of capital punishments. But a third cause which in- 



CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 257 

creases the frequency of capital executions in England is a defect oi 
the laws, in not being provided with any other punishment than that 
of death, sufficiently terrible to keep offenders in awe Transporta- 
tion, which is the sentence second in the order of severity, appears to 
me to answer the purpose of example very imperfectly, not only be- 
cause exile is in reality a slight punishment to those who have neither 
property, nor friends, nor reputation, nor regular means of subsistence 
at home ; and because their situation becomes little worse by their 
crime than it was before they committed it; but because the punish- 
ment, whatever it be, is unobserved and unknown. A transported 
convict may suffer under his sentence, but his sufferings are removed 
from the view of his countrymen ; his misery is unseen ] his condition 
strikes no terror into the minds of those for whose warning and ad- 
monition it was intended. This chasm in the scale of punishment 
produces also two farther imperfections in the administration of penal 
justice : the first is, that the same punishment is extended to crimes of 
very different character and malignity ; the second, that punishments 
separated by a great interval are assigned to crimes hardly distin- 
guishable in their guilt and mischief. 

The end of punishment is twofold 3 — amendment and example. In 
the first of these, the reformation of criminals, little has ever been ef- 
fected, and little, I fear, is practicable. From every species of punish- 
ment that has hitherto been devised, from imprisonment and exile, from 
pain and infamy, malefactors return more hardened in their crimes, and 
more instructed. If there be anything that shakes the soul of a con- 
firmed villain, it is the expectation of approaching death. The horrors 
of this situation may cause such a wrench in the mental organs as to 
give them a holding turn : and I think it probable, that many of those 
who are executed would, if they were delivered at the point of death, 
retain such a remembrance of their sensations as might preserve them, 
unless urged by extreme want, from relapsing into their former crimes. 
But this is an experiment that, from its nature, cannot be repeated 
often. 

Of the reforming punishments which have not yet been tried, none 
promises so much success as that of solitary imprisonment, or the con- 
finement of criminals in separate apartments. This improvement auac- 
ments the terror of the punishment ; secludes the criminal from the soci- 
ety of his fellow-prisoners, in which society the worst are sure to corrupt 
the better ; weans him from the knowledge of his companions, and 
from the love of that turbulent, precarious life in which his vices had 
engaged him; is calculated to raise up in him reflections on the folly 
of his choice, and to dispose his mind to such bitter and continued 
penitence as may produce a lasting alteration in the principles of his 
conduct. 

As aversion to labor is the cause from which half of the vices ot 
low life deduce their origin and continuance, punishments ought to be 
contrived with a view to the conquering of this disposition. Two 
opposite expedients have been recommended for this purpose : the one 
solitary confinement with hard labor : the other, solitary confinemeu 



258 CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 



with nothing to do. Both expedients seek the same end — to reconcile 
the idle to a life of industry. The former hopes to effect this by mak- 
ing labor habitual ; the latter by making idleness insupportable : and 
the preference of one method to the other depends upon the question, 
whether a man is more likely to betake himself, of his own accord, to 
work who has been accustomed to employment, or who has been dis 
tressed by the want of it. When jails are once provided for the 
separate confinement of prisoners, which both proposals require, the 
choice between them may soon be determined by experience. If labor 
be exacted, I would leave the whole, or a portion of the earnings to 
the prisoner's use, and I would debar him from any other provision or 
supply ; that his subsistence, however coarse and penurious, may be 
proportioned to his diligence, and that he may taste the advantage of 
industry together with the toil. I would go farther ; I would measure 
the confinement not by the duration of time, but by quantity of work, 
in order both to excite industry, and to render it more voluntary. But 
the principal difficulty remains still ; namely^ how to dispose of crimi- 
nals after their enlargement. By a rule of life, which is perhaps too 
invariably and indiscriminately adhered to, no one will receive a man 
or woman out of a jail into any service or employment whatever. 
This is the common misfortune of public punishments, that they pre- 
clude the offender from all honest means of future support.^ It seems 
incumbent upon the state to secure a maintenance for those who are 
willing to work for it; and yet it is absolutely necessary to divide 
criminals as far asunder from one another as possible. Whether male 
prisoners might not, after the term of their confinement was expired, 
be distributed in the country, detained within certain limits, and em- 
ployed upon the public roads; and females be remitted to the over- 
seers of country parishes, to be there furnished with dwellings^ and 
with the materials and implements of occupation ; — whether by these, 
or by what other methods it may be possible to effect the two purposes 
of employment and dispersion ; well merits the attention of all who are 
anxious to perfect the internal regulation of their country. 

Torture is applied either to obtain confessions of guilt, or to exaspe- 
rate or prolong the pains of death. No bodily punishment, however 
excruciating or long continued, receives the name of torture, unless it 
be designed to kill the criminal by a more lingering death ; or to extort 
from him the discovery of some secret which is supposed to lie con- 
cealed in his breast. Tke question by torture appears to be equivocal 
in its effects: for since extremity of pain, and not any consciousness of 
remorse in the mind, produces those effects, an innocent man may sink 
under the torment as w^ell as he who is guilty. The latter has as much 
to fear from yielding as the former. The instant and almost irresisti- 
ble desire of relief may draw from one sufferer false accusations of 
himself or others, as it may sometimes extract the truth out of another. 
This ambiguity renders the use of torture, as a means of procuring in- 

* Until this inconvenience be remedied, small offences had perhaps better go un- 
punished ; I do not mean that the law should exempt them from punishment, but that 
)p-^.vate persons should be tender in prosecuting them. 



^ 



CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 259 

formation in criminal proceedings, liable to the risk of grievous and 
irreparable injustice. For which reason, though recommended by 
ancient and general example, it has been properly exploded from the 
mild and cautious system of penal jurisprudence established in this 
country. 

Barbarous spectacles of human agony are justly found fault with, 
as tending to harden and deprave the public feelings, and to destroy 
that sympathy with which the sufferings of our fellow creatures ought 
always to be seen \ or, if no effect of this kind follow from them, they 
counteract in some measure their own design, by sinking men's abhor- 
rence of the crime in their commisseration of the criminal. But if a 
mode of execution could be devised which would augment the horror 
of the punishment without offending or impairing the public sensibility 
by cruel or unseemly exhibitions of death, it might add something to 
the efficacy of the example ; and by being reserved for a few atrocious 
crimes, might also enlarge the scale of punishment ] an addition to 
which seems wanting : for, as the matter remains at present, you hang 
a malefactor for a simple robbery, and can do no more to the villain 
who has poisoned his father. Somewhat of the sort we have been 
describing was the proposal, not long since suggested, of casting 
murderers into a den of wild beasts, where they would perish in a 
manner dreadful to the imagination, yet concealed from the view. 

Infamous punishments are mismanaged in this country, with respect 
both to the crimes and the criminals. In the first place, they ought to 
be confined to offences which are hold en in undisputed and universal 
detestation. To condemn to the pillory he author or editor of a libel 
against the state, who has rendered hiiuoclf the favorite of a party, if 
not of the people, by the very act for which he stands there, is to 
gratify the offender, and to expose the laws to mockery and insult. 
In the second place, the delinquents who receive this sentence are for 
the most part such as have long ceased either to value reputation or 
to fear shame ] of whose happiness, and of whose enjoyments, charac- 
ter makes no part Thus the low ministers of libertinism, the keepers 
of bawdy or disorderly houseS; are threatened in vain with a punish- 
ment that affects a sense vrh-ch they have not ; that applies solely to 
the imagination, to the virtue and the pride of human nature. The 
pillory or any other infamous distinction might be employed rightly, 
and with effect, in the punishment of some offences of higher life: as 
of frauds and peculation in office ; of collusions and connivances, by 
which the public treasury is defrauded ; of breaches of trust; of per- 
jury and subornation of perjury; of the clandestine and forbidden sale 
of places of flagrant abuses of authority, or neglect of duty ; and lastly, 
of corruption in the exercise of confidential or judicial offices. In all 
which, the more elevated was the station of the criminal, the more 
signal and conspicuous would be the triumph of justice. 

The certainty of punishment is of more consequence than the se- 
verity. Criminals do not so much flatter themselves with the lenity 
of the sentence as with the hope of escaping. They are not so apt to 
compare what they gain by the crime with what they may suffer from 



260 CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 

the punishment, as to encourage themselves with the chance of con 
cealment or flight. For which reason, a vigilant magistracy, an ac- 
curate pohce, a proper distribution of force and intelhgence, together 
with due rewards for the discovery and apprehension of malefactors, 
and an undeviating impartiality in carrying the laws into execution, 
contribute more to the restraint and suppression of crimes than any 
violent exacerbations of punishment. And, for the same reason, of all 
contrivances directed to this end, those perhaps are most effectual which 
facilitate the conviction of criminals. The offence of counterfeiting 
the coin could not be checked by all the terrors and the utmost severity 
of law, while the act of coining was necessary to he established by 
specific proof. The statute which made possession of the implements 
of coining capital, that is, which constituted that possession complete 
evidence of the offender's guilt, was the first thing that gave force and 
efficacy to the denunciations of law upon this subject. The statute of 
James the First, relative to the murder of bastard children, which 
ordains that the concealment of the birth should be deemed incontesta- 
hie proof of the charge, though a harsh law, was, in like manner with 
the former, well calculated to put a stop to the crime. 

It is upon the principle of this observation, that I apprehend much 
harm to have been done to the community, by the overstrained scrupu- 
lousness, or weak timidity, of juries, which demands often such proof 
of a prisoner's guilt as the nature and secrecy of his crime scarce possi- 
bly admit of; and which holds it the part of a safe conscience not to 
condemn any man while there exists the minutest possibility of his 
innocence. Any story they may happen to have heard or read, 
whether real or feigned, in which C' mrts of justice have been misled by 
presumptions of guilt, is enough, in their minds, to found an acquittal 
upon, where positive proof is wanting. I do not mean that juries 
should indulge conjectures, should magnify suspicions into proofs, or 
even that they should weigh prvobabilities in gold scales: but when the 
prepondeiation of evidence is so manifest as to persuade every private 
understanding of the prisoner's guilt: when it furnishes the degree of 
credibility upon which men decide and act in all other doubts, and 
which experience hath shown thatthey may decide and act upon with 
sufficient safety : to reject such proof, from an insinuation of the un- 
certainty that belongs to all human affairs, and from a general dread 
lest the charge of innocent blood should lie at their doors, is a conduct 
which, however natural to a mind studious of its own quiet, is author- 
ized by no considerations of rectitude or utiliiy. It counteracts the 
care, and damps the activity of government; it holds out public en- 
couragement to villainy, by confessing the impossibility of bringing 
villains to justice ] and that species of encouragement which, as hath 
been just now observed, the minds of such men are most apt to enter- 
tain and dwell upon. 

There are two popular maxims which seem to have a considerable 
influence in producing the injudicious acquittals of which we complain. 
.One is, — "that circumstantial evidence falls short of positive proof." 
This assertion, in the unqualified sense in which it is applied, is not 



CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 261 

true. A concurrence of well authenticated circumstances composes a 
stronger ground of assurance than positive testimony, unconfirmed by 
circumstances, usually affords. Circumstances cannot lie. The con- 
clusion also which results from them, though deduced by only proba- 
ble inference, is commonly more to be relied upon than the veracity of 
an unsupported solitary witness. The danger of being deceived is less, 
the actual instances of deception are fewer, in the one case than the 
other. What is called positive proof in criminal matters, as where a 
man swears to the person of the prisoner, and that he actually saw^ him 
commit the crime with which he is charged, may be founded in the 
mistake or perjury of a single witness. Such mistakes and such per- 
juries are not without many examples. Whereas to impose upon a 
court of justice a chain of ctrcumstantial evidence^ in support of a fabri- 
cated accusation, requires such a number of false witnesses as seldom 
meet together ; a union also of skill and wickedness which is still 
more rare ; and, after all, this species of proof lies much more open to 
discussion, and is more likely, if false, to be contradicted, or to betray 
itself by some unforeseen inconsistency, than that direct proof, which, 
being confined within ihe knowledge of a single person, which, ap- 
pealing to, or standing connected with no external or collateral cir- 
cumstances, is incapable, by its very simplicity, of being confronted 
with opposite probabilities. 

The other maxim which deserves a similar examination is this : — 
" That it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one inno- 
cent man should suffer." If by saying it is better be meant that it is 
more for the public advantage, the proposition, I think, cannot be 
maintained. The security of civil life, which is essential to the value 
and the enjoyment of every blessing it contains, and the interruption 
of which is followed by universal misery and confusion, is protected 
chiefly by the dread of punishment. The misfortune of an individual 
(for such may the sufferings, or even the death, of an innocent person 
be called, when they are occasioned by no evil intention,) cannot be 
placed in competition with this object. I do not contend that the life 
or safety of the meanest subject ought, in any case, to be knowingly 
sacrificed ; no principle of judicature, no end of punishment, can ever 
require that. But when certain rules of adjudication must be pursued, 
when certain degrees of credibility must be accepted, in order to reach 
the crimes with which the public are infested; courts of justice should 
not be deterred from the application of these rules, by every suspicion 
of danger, or by the mere possibility of confounding the innocent with 
the guilty. They ought rather to reflect, that he who falls by a mis- 
taken sentence may be considered as falling for his country-, while he 
suffers under the operation of those rules, by the general effect and 
tendency of which the welfare of the community is maintained and 
upholden. 



262 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 

CHAPTER X. 

OF RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND OF TOLERATION. 

" A RELIGIOUS establishment is no part of Christianity ; it is only 
the means of inculcating it." Among the Jews, the rights and offices, 
the order, family, and succession of the priesthood were marked out 
by the authority which declared the law itself. These, therefore, 
were parts of the Jewish religion, as well as the means of transmit- 
ting it. Not so with the new institution. It cannot be proved that 
any form of church-government was laid down in the Christian, as it 
had been in the Jewish Scriptures, w4th a view of fixing a constitu- 
tion for succeeding ages; and which constitution, consequenlly, the 
disciples of Christianity would everywhere, and at all times, by the 
very law of their religion, be obliged to adopt. Certainly no com- 
mand for this purpose was delivered by Christ himself, and if it be 
shown that the apostles ordained bishops and presbyters among their 
first converts, it must be remembered that deacons also and deaconesses 
were appointed by them, with functions very dissimilar to any which 
obtain in the church at present. The truth seems to have been, thai 
such offices were at first erected in the Christian church, as the good 
order, the instruction, and the exigencies of the society at that time 
required, without any intention, at least without any declared design, 
of regulating the appointment, authority, or the distinctions of Chris- 
tian ministers under future circumstances. This reserve, if we may 
so call it, in the Christian legislator is sufficiently accounted for by 
two considerations : — First, that no precise constitution could be 
framed which would suit with the condition of Christianity in its 
primitive state, and with that which it was to assume when it should 
be advanced into a national religion : Secondly, that a particular de- 
signation of office or authority among the ministers of the new rehgion 
might have so interfered with the arrangements of civil policy, as to 
have formed, in some countries, a considerable obstacle to the progress 
and reception of the religion itself. 

The authority therefore of a church establishment is founded in its 
utility : and, whenever, upon this principle, we deliberate concerning 
the form, propriety, or comparative excellency of different establish- 
ments, the single view under which we ought to consider any of them 
is, that of " a scheme of instruction ;" the single end we ought to pro- 
pose by them is " the preservation and communication of religious 
Knowledge." Every other idea, and every other end, that have been 
mixed with this, as the making of the church an engine, or even an 
ally, of the state ; converting it into the means of strengthening or 
diffusing influence ; or regarding it as a support of regal in opposi- 
tion to popular forms of government; have served only to debase 
the institution, and to introduce into it numerous corruptions and 
abuses. 

The notion of a religious establishment comprehends three things ] 



RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 263 

a clergy, or an order of men secluded from other professions to attend 
upon the offices of religion ; a legal provision for the maintenance of 
the clergy ; and the confining of that provision to the teachers of a 
particular sect of Christianity. If any one of these thiee things be 
wanting ; if there be no clergy, as among the Quakers ; or if the clergy 
have no other provision than what they derive from the voluntary 
contribution of their hearers ; or if the provision which the laws assign 
to the support of religion be extended to various sects and denomina- 
tions of Christians : there exists no national religion or established 
church, according to the sense which these terms are usually made 
to convey. He, therefore, who would defend ecclesiastical establish- 
ments, must show the separate utility of these three essential parts of 
their constitution. 

1. The question first in order upon the subject, as well as the most 
fundamental in its importance, is, whether the knowledge and profes- 
sion of Christianity can be maintained in a country, withoitt a class of 
men set apart by public authority to the study and teaching of religion, 
and to the conducting of public worship ; and for these purposes se- 
cluded from other employments. I add this last circumstance, because 
in it consists, as I take it, the substance of the controversy. Now it 
must be remembered, that Christianity is an historical religion, founded 
in facts which are related to have passed, upon discourses which were 
hold en, and letters which were written, in a remote age and distant 
country of the world, as well as under a state of life and manners, and 
during the prevalency of opinions, customs, and institutions veryun 
like any which are found among mankind at present. Moreover, this 
religion, having been first published in the country of Judea, and being 
built upon a more ancieni religion of the Jews, is necessarily and in- 
timately connected with the sacred writings, with the history and 
polity of that singular people : to which must be added, that the records 
of both revelations are preserved in languages which have long ceased 
to be spoken in any part of the world. Books which come down to 
us from time so remote, and under so many causes of unavoidable ob- 
scurity, cannot it is evident, be understood without study and prepara- 
tion. The languages must be learned. The various writings which 
these volumes contain must be carefully compared with one another, 
and with themselves. What remains of contemporary authors, or oi 
authors connected with the age, the country, or the subject of oui 
Scriptures, must be perused and consulted, in order to interpret doubt- 
ful forms of speech, and to explain allusions which refer to objects oi 
usages that no longer exist. Above all, the modes of expression, the 
habits of reasoning and argumentation, which were then in use, and 
to which the discourses even of inspired teachers were necessarily 
adapted, must be sufficiently known, and can only be known at all by 
a due acquaintance with ancient literature. And, lastly, to establish 
the genuineness and integrity of the canonical Scriptures themselves, 
a series of testimony recognizing the notoriety and reception of these 
books, must be deduced from times near to those of their first publica- 
tion, down the succession of ages through which they have been 



264 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 

transmitted to us. The qualifications necessary for such researches 
demand, it is confessed, a degree of leisure, and a kind of education, 
inconsistent with the exercise of any other profession. But how few 
are there among the clergy from whom anything of this sort can be 
expected ! how small a proportion of their number who seem likely 
either to augment the fund of sacred literature, or even to collect what 
is already known ! To this objection it may be replied, that we sow 
many seeds to raise one flower. In order to produce a few capable of 
improving and continuing the stock of Christian erudition, leisure and 
opportunity muse be afforded to great numbers. Original knowledge 
of this kind can never be universal; but it is of the utmost importance, 
and it is enough, that there be at all times found some qualified for 
such inquiries, and in whose concurring and independent conclusions 
upon each subject, the rest of the Christian community may safely 
confide : whereas, without an order of clergy educated for the pur- 
pose, and led to the prosecution of these studies by the habits, the 
leisure and the objects of their vocation, it may be well questioned 
whether the learning itself v*^ould not have been lost by which the 
"ecords of our faith are interpreted and defended. We contend, there 
ore, that an order of clergy is necessary to perpetuate the evidences of 
levelation, and \o interpret the obscurity of those ancient writings in 
which the religion is contained. But besides this, which forms, no 
doubt, one design of their institution, the more ordinary oflices of pub- 
lic teaching, and of conducting public worship, call for qualifications 
not usually to be met with amid the employments of civil life. It has 
been acknowledged by some who cannot be suspected of making un- 
necessary concessions in favor of establishments, "to be barely possible 
that a person who was never educated for the office should acquit him- 
self with decency as a public teacher of religion.'^ And that surely 
must be a very defective policy which trusts to possibilities for success, 
when provision is to be made for regular and general instruction. Little 
objection to this argument can be drawn from the example of the Qua- 
kers, who, it may be said, furnish an experimental proof that the wor- 
ship and profession of Christianity may be upholden without a sepa- 
rate clergy. These sectaries everywhere subsist in conjunction with a 
regular establishment. They have access to the writings, they profit 
by the labors of the clergy, in common with other Christians. They 
participate in that general diffusion of religious knowledge, which the 
constant teaching of a more regular ministry keeps up in the country. 
With such aids, and under such circumstances, the defects of a plan 
may not be much felt, although the plan itself be altogether unfit for 
general imitation. 

2. If then an order of clergy be necessary, if it be necessary also to 
seclude them from the employments and profits of other professions, 
it is evident they ought to be enabled to derive a maintenance from their 
own. Now this maintenance must either depend upon the voluntary 
contributions of their hearers, or arise from revenues assigned by au- 
thority of law. To the scheme of voluntary contributions there 
exists this unsurmou itable objection, that few would ultimately con- 



RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHIVIENTS AND TOLERATION. 26D 

tribute anythin2; at all. However the zeal of a sect, or the novelty 
of a change, might support such an experiment for a while, no reli- 
ance could be placed upon it as a general and permanent provision. 
It is at all times a bad constitution which presents temptations of 
interest in opposition to the duties of religion ; or which makes the 
offices of religion expensive to those who attend upon them; or which 
allows pretences of conscience to be an excuse for not sharing in a 
pub?ic burden. If, by declining to frequent religious assemblies, men 
could save their money, at the same time that they indulge their in- 
dolence, and their disinclination to exercises of seriousness and reflec- 
tion ; or if, by dissenting from the national religion, they could be ex- 
cused from contributing to the support of the ministers of religion ; it 
is to be feared that many would take advantage of the option which 
was thus imprudently left open to them, and that this liberty might 
finally operate to the decay of virtue, and an irrecoverable forgetful - 
ness of all religion in the country. Is there not too much reason to 
fear that, if it were referred to the discretion of each neighborhood, 
whether they would maintain among them a teacher of religion or not, 
many districts would remain unprovided with any '? that with the 
difficulties which encumber every measure requiring the co-operation 
of numbers, and where each individual of the number has an interest 
secretly pleading against the success of the measure itself, associa- 
tions for the support of Christian worship and instruction would nei- 
ther be numerous nor long continued '? The devout and pious might 
lament in vain the want or the distance of a religious assembly : they 
could not form or maintain one without the concurrence of neighbors 
;vho felt neither their zeal nor their liberality. 

From the difficulty with which congregations would be established 
and upheld upon the voluntary plan, let us carry our thoughts to the 
condition of those who are to officiate in them. Preaching, in time, 
would become a mode of begging. With what sincerity, or with what 
dignity, can a preacher dispense the truths of Christianity whose 
thoughts are perpetually solicited to the reflection how he may in- 
crease his subscription '? His eloquence, if he possess any, resembles 
rather the exhibition of a player who is computing the profits of his 
theatre than the simplicity of a man who, feeling himself the awful 
truths of religion, is seeking to bring others to such a sense and un- 
derstanding of their duty as may save their souls. Moreover, a little 
experience of the disposition of the common people will in every 
country inform us, that it is one thing to edify them in Christian 
knowledge, and another to gratify their taste for vehement, impas- 
sioned oratory ; that he, not only whose success, but whose subsis- 
tence depends upon collecting and pleasing a crowd, must resort to 
other arts than the acquirement and communication of sober and profi- 
table instruction. For a preacher to be thus at the mercy of his audi- 
ence; to be obliged to adapt his doctrines to the pleasure of the capri- 
cious multitude ; to be continually affecting a style and manner nei- 
ther natural to him nor agreeable to his judgment; to live in con- 
stant bondage to tyrannical and insolent directors; are circumstances 

M 



266 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 

SO mortifying, not only to the pride of the human heart, but to the 
virtuous love of independency, that they are rarely submitted to with- 
out a sacrifice of principle and a depravation of character ; — at least 
it may be pronounced that a ministry so degraded would soon fall 
into the lowest hands ; for it would be found impossible to engage 
men of worth and ability in so precarious and humiliating a pro- 
fession. 

If, in deference, then, to these reasons, it be admitted that a legal 
provision for the clergy, compulsory upon those who contribute to it, 
is expedient ; the next question will be, whether this provision should 
be confined to one sect of Christianity, or extended indifferently to all ? 
Now it should be observed, that this question n^ver can offer itself 
where the people are agreed in their religious opinions; and that it 
never ought to arise where a system may he framed of doctrines and 
worship wide enough to comprehend their disagreement; and which 
might satisfy all, by uniting all in the articles of their common faith, 
and in a mode of divine worship that omits every subject of contro- 
versy or offence. Where such a comprehension is practicable, the 
comprehending religion ought to be made that of the state. But if this 
be despaired of ; if religious opinions exist, not only so various, but so 
contradictory, as to render it impossible to reconcile them to each other, 
or to any one confession of faith, rule or discipline, or form of worship; 
if, consequently, separate congregations and different sects must una- 
voidably continue in the country : under such circumstances, whether 
the law ought to establish one sect in preference to the rest ; that is, 
whether they ought to confer the provision assigned to the maintenance 
of religion upon the teachers of one system of doctrines alone, becomes 
a question of necessary discussion and of great importance. And 
whatever we may determine concerning speculative rights and abstract 
properties, when we set about the framing of an ecclesiastical consti- 
tution adapted to real life, and to the actual state of religion in the 
country, we shall find this question very nearly related to, and princi- 
pally, indeed, dependent upon another; namely, "In what way, or by 
whom, ought the ministers of religion to be appointed V If the spe- 
cies of patronage be retained to which we are accustomed in this coun- 
try, and which allows private individuals to nominate teachers of reli- 
gion for districts and congregations to which they are absolute stran- 
gers J without some test proposed to the persons nominated, the utmost 
discordancy of religious opinions might arise between the several teach- 
ers and their respective congregations. A popish patron might 
appoint a priest to say mass to a congregation of Protestants; an 
Episcopal clergyman be sent to officiate in a parish of Presbyterians ; 
or a Presbyterian divine to inveigh against the errors of popery be- 
fore an audience of papists. The requisition then of subscription, or 
any other test by which the national religion is guarded, may be con- 
sidered merely as a restriction upon the exercise of private patron- 
age. The laws speak to the private patron thus: — "Of those whom 
we have previously pronounced to be fitly qualified to teach religion, 
we allow you to select one * but we do not allow you to decide what 



RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 267 

religion shall be established in a particular district of the country ; for 
which decision you are nowise fitted by any qualifications which, as 
a private patron, you may happen to possess." If it be necessary that 
the point be determined for the inhabitants by any other will than 
their own, it is surely better that it should be determined by a delibe- 
rate resolution of the legislature than by the casual inclination of an 
individual by whom the right is purchased or to whom it devolves 
as a mere secular inheritance. Wheresoever, therefore, this constitu- 
tion of patronage is adopted, a national religion, or the legal preference 
of one particular religion to all others, must almost necessarily ac- 
company it. But, secondly, let it be supposed that the appointment 
of the minister of religion was in every parish left to the choice of the 
parishioners ) might not this choice, we ask, be safely exercised with- 
out its being limited to the teachers of any particular sect ] The 
effect of such a liberty must be, that a papist, or a Presbyterian, a Me- 
thodist, a Moravian, or an Anabaptist, would successively gain pos- 
session of the pulpit, according as a majority of the party happened at 
each election to prevail. Now, with what violence the conflict 
would upon every vacancy be renewed; what bitter animosities 
would be revived, or rather be constantly fed and kept alive in the 
neighborhood \ with what unconquerable aversion the teacher and his 
religion would be received by the defeated party ; may be foreseen by 
those who reflect with how much passion every dispute is carried on 
in which the name of religion can be made to mix itself ; much more 
where the cause itself is concerned so immediately as it would be in 
this. Or, thirdly, if the state appoint the ministers of religion, this 
constitution will differ little from the establishment of a national reli- 
gion \ for the state will, undoubtedly, appoint those, and those alone, 
whose religious opinions, or rather whose religious denominations, 
agree with his own ; unless it be thought that anything would be 
gained to religious liberty by transferring the choice of the national 
religion from the legislature of the country to the magistrate who ad- 
ministers the executive government. The only plan which seems to 
render the legal maintenance of a clergy practicable, without the legal 
preference of one sect of Christians to others, is that of an experiment 
which is said to be attempted or designed in some of the new states of 
North America. The nature of the plan is thus described :--A tax is 
levied upon the inhabitants for the general support of religion ; the 
collector of the tax goes round with a register in his hand, in which 
are inserted, at the head of so many distinct columns, the names of 
the several religious sects that are professed in the country. The 
person who is called upon for the assessment, as soon as he has paid 
his quota, subscribes his name and the sum in which of the columns 
he pleases ; and the amount of what is collected in each column is 
paid over to the minister of that denomination. In this scheme it is 
not left to the option of the subject, whether he will contribute, or 
how much he shall contribute, to the maintenance of a Christian min- 
istry ; it is only referred to his choice to determine by what sect his 
contribution shall be received. The above arrangement is undoubt- 



Z6S RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 

edly the best that has been proposed upon this principle ; it bears the 
appearance of liberality and justice ] it may contain some solid ad- 
vantages ; nevertheless, it labors under incr nveniences which will be 
found, I think, upon trial to overbalance al t its recommendations. It 
is scarcely compatible with that which is the first requisite in an ec- 
clesiastical establishment, the division of the country into parishes of 
a commodious extent. If the parishes be small, and ministers of every 
denomination be stationed in each (which the plan seems to suppose,) 
the expense of their maintenance will become too burdensome a 
charge for the country to support. If, to reduce the expense, the 
districts be enlarged, the place of assembling will oftentimes be too 
far removed from the residence of the persons who ought to resort to 
it. Again, the making the pecuniary success of the different teacherg 
of religion to depend on the number and wealth of their respective 
followers would naturally generate strifes and indecent jealousies 
among them j as well as produce a polemical and proselyting spirit, 
founded in or mixed with views of private gain, which would both de- 
prave the principles of the clergy, and distract the country with endless 
contentions. 

The argument, then, by which ecclesiastical establishments are de- 
fended proceeds by these steps : — The knowledge and profession of 
Christianity cannot be upholden without a clergy ; a clergy cannot be 
supported without a legal provision ; a legal provision for the clergy 
cannot be constituted without the preference of one sect of Christians 
to the rest : and the conclusion will be conveniently satisfactory in the 
degree in which the truth of these several propositions can be made out. 

If it be deemed expedient to establish a national religion, that is to 
say, one sect in preference to all others ; some test, by which the teach- 
ers of that sect may be distinguished from the teachers of different sects, 
appears to be an indispensable consequence. The existence of such 
m establishment supposes it : the very notion of a national religion 
ncludes that of a test. 

But this necessity, which is real, hath, according to the fashion of 
numan affairs, furnished to almost every church a pretence for extend- 
ing, multiplying, and continuing such tests beyond what the occasion 
justified. For though some purposes of order and tranquilUty may be 
answered by the establishment of creeds and confessions, yet they are 
all at times attended with serious inconveniences : they check inquiry ; 
they violate liberty ; they ensnare the consciences of the clergy, by 
holding out temptations to prevarication : however they may express 
the persuasion, or be accommodated to the controversies or to the fears 
of the age in which they are composed, in process of time, and by rea- 
son of the changes which are wont to take place in the judgment of 
mankind upon religious subjects, they come at length to contradict the 
actual opinions of the church whose doctrines they profess to contain ; 
and they often perpetuate the proscription of sects, and tenets, from 
which any danger has long ceased to be apprehended. 

It may not follow from these objections that tests and subscriptions 
ought to be abolished ; but it follows that they ought to be made as 



RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 20.9 

simple and easy as possible; that they should be adapted, irom time 
to time, to the varying sentiments and circumstances of the church in 
which they are received ; and that they should at no time advance one 
step farther than some subsisting necessity requires. If, for instance, 
promises of conformity to the rites, liturgy, and offices of the church be 
sufficient to prevent confusion and disorder in the celebration of divine 
worship, then such promises ought to be accepted in the place of stricter 
subscriptions. 

If articles of 'peace^ as they are called, that is, engagements not to 
preach certain doctrines, nor to revive certain controversies, would ex- 
clude indecent altercations among the national clergy, as well as secure 
to the public teaching of religion as much of uniformity and quiet as 
is necessary to edification; then confessions of faith ought to be con- 
verted into articles of peace. In a word, it ought to be h olden a suffi- 
cient reason for relaxing the terms of subscription, or for dropping any 
or all of the articles to be subscribed, that no present necessity requires 
the strictness which is complained of, or that it should be extended to 
so many points of doctrine. 

The division of the country into districts, and the stationing in each 
district a teacher of religion, forms the substantial part of every church 
establishment. The varieties that have been introduced into the gov- 
ernment and discipline of different churches are of inferior importance, 
when compared with this, in which they all agree. Of these economi- 
cal questions, none seems more material than that which has been long 
agitated in the reformed churches of Christendom, whether a parity 
among the clergy, or a distinction of orders in the ministry, be more 
conducive to the general ends of the institution. In favor of that sys- 
tem which the laws of this country have preferred, we may allege the 
following reasons : that it secures tranquillity and subordination among 
the clergy themselves : that it corresponds with the gradations of rank 
in civil life, and provides for the edification of each rank, by stationing 
in each an order of clergy of their own class and quality ; and, lastly, 
that the same fund produces more effect, both as an allurement to men 
of talents to enter into the church, and as a stimulus to the industry of 
those who are already in it, when distributed into prizes of different val- 
ue, than when divided into equal shares. 

After the state has once established a particular system of faith as 
a national religion, a question will soon occur concerning the treatment 
and toleration of those who dissent from it. This question is properly 
preceded by another, concerning the right which the civil magistrate 
possesses to interfere in matters of religion at all : for, although this 
right be acknowledged while he is employed solely in providing means 
of public instruction, it will probably be disputed (indeed it ever has 
been,) when he proceeds to inflict penalties, to impose restraints or in- 
capacities, on the account of religious distinctions. They who admit 
no other just original of civil government than what is founded in 
some stipulation with its subjects, are at liberty to contend that the 
concerns of religion were excepted out of the social compact ; that, in 
an affair which can only be transacted between God and a man's own 



270 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 

conscience, no commission or authority was ever delegated to the civil 
magistrate, or could indeed be transferred from the person himself to 
any other. We, however, who have rejected this theory, because we 
cannot discover any actual contract between the state and the people, 
and because we cannot allow any arbitrary fiction to be made the foun- 
dation of real rights and of real obligations, find ourselves precluded 
from this distinction. The reasoning which deduces the authority of 
civil government from the will of God, and which collects that will 
from public expediency alone, binds us to the unreserved conclusion, 
that the jurisdiction of the magistrate is limited by no consideration 
but that of general utility : in plainer terms, that whatever be the sub- 
ject to be regulated, it is lawful for him to interfere whenever his inter- 
ference, in its general tendency, appears to be conducive to the common 
interest. There is nothing in the nature of religion, as such, which 
exempts it from the authority of the legislator, when the safety or wel- 
fare of the community requires his interposition. It has been said, 
indeed, that religion, pertaining to the interests of a life to come, lies 
beyond the province of civil government, the office of which is confined 
to the affairs of this life. But in reply to this objection it may be ob- 
served, that when the laws interfere even in religion, they interfere 
only with temporals ; their effects terminate, their power operates only 
upon those rights and interests which confessedly belong to their dis- 
posal. The acts of the legislature, the edicts of the prince, the sentence 
of the judge, cannot affect my salvation • nor do they, without the most 
absurd arrogance, pretend to any such power : but they may deprive 
me of liberty, of property, and even of life itself, on account of my re- 
ligion I and however I may complain of the injustice of the sentence 
by which 1 am condemned, I cannot allege that the magistrate has 
transgressed the boundaries of his jurisdiction : because the property, 
the liberty, and the life of the subject may be taken away by the au- 
thority of the laws, for any reason which, in the judgment of the 
legislature, renders such a measure necessary to the common welfare. 
Moreover, as the precepts of religion may regulate all the offices of 
life, or may be so construed as to extend to all, the exemption of reli- 
gion from the control of human laws might afford a plea which would 
exclude civil government from every authority over the conduct of its 
subjects. Religious liberty is, hke civjl liberty, not an immunity from 
restraint, but the being restrained by no law but what in a greater de- 
gree conduces to the public welfare. 

Still it is right " to obey God rather than man." Nothing that we 
have said encroaches upon the truth of this sacred and undisputed 
maxim : the right of the magistrate to ordain, and the obligation of 
the subject to obey, in matters of religion, maybe very different; and 
will be so, as often as they flow from opposite apprehensions of the 
divine will. In affairs that are properly of a civil nature, in " the 
things that are Caesar's," this difference seldom happens. The law 
authorizes the act which it enjoins; revelation being either silent 
upon the subject, or referring to the laws of the country, or requirin;^ 
only that men act by some fixed rule, and that this rule be establisiied 



RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 271 

by competent authority. But when human laws interpose their direc- 
tion in matters of religion ; by dictating, for example, the object or the 
mode of divine worship ; by prohibiting the profession of some arti- 
cles of faith, and by exacting that of others, they are liable to clash 
with what private persons believe to be already settled by precepts of 
revelation ] or to contradict what God himself, they think, hath declar- 
ed to be true. In this case, on whichever side the mistake lies, or 
whatever plea the state may allege to justify its edict, the subject can 
have none to excuse his compliance. The same consideration also 
points out the distinction as to the authority of the state between 
temporals and spirituals. The magistrate is not to be obeyed in tem- 
porals more than in spirituals, ivhere a repugnancy is perceived be- 
tween his commands and any credited manifestations of the divine 
will : but such repugnances are much less likely to arise in one case 
than the other. 

When w^e grant that it is lawful for the magistrate to interfere in 
religion as often as his interference appears to him to conduce, in its 
general tendency, to the public happiness ; it may be argued, from this 
concession, since salvation is the highest interest of mankind, and 
since, consequently, to advance that'is, to promote the public happiness 
in the best way, and in the greatest degree in which it can be pro- 
moted, it follows, that it is not only the" right, but the duty, of every 
magistrate invested with supreme power, to enforce upon his subjects 
the reception of that religion which he deems most acceptable to God, 
and to enforce it by such methods as may appear most effectual for 
the end proposed. A po])ish king, for example, who should believe 
that salvation is not attainable out of the precincts of the Romish 
church, would derive a right from our principles (not to say that he 
would be bound by them) to employ the power with which the con- 
stitution intrusted him, and which power, in absolute monarchies, com- 
mands the lives and fortunes of every subject of the empire, in reducing 
his people within that communion. We confess that this consequence 
is inferred from the principles we have laid dowm concerning the 
foundation of civil authority, not without the resemblance of a regular 
deduction : we confess also that it is a conclusion which it behooves 
us to dispose of ] because, if it really follow from our theory of govern- 
ment, the theory itself ought to be given up. Now it will be remem- 
bered that the terms of our proposition are these : "That it is lawful 
for the magistrate to interfere in the affairs of religion, whenever his 
interference appears to him to conduce, by its general tendency, to the 
public happiness." The clause of '• general tendency," when this rule 
comes to be applied, wnll be found a very significant part of the direc- 
tion. It obliges the magistrate to reflect, not only whether the religion 
which he wishes to propagate among his subjects be that which will 
best secure their eternal welfare; not only, whether the methods he 
employs be likely to effectuate the establishment of that religion : but 
also upon this farther question, whether the kind of interference which 
he is about to exercise, if it were adopted as a common maxim amoi;g 
states and princes, or received as a general rule for The coiuluct oi gov- 



272 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 

ernment in matters of religion, would, upon the whole, and in the mass 
of instances in which his example might he imitated, conduce to the 
furtherance of human salvation. If the magistrate, for example, 
should think, that although the application of his power might, in the 
instance concerning which he deliberates, advance the true religion, 
and together with it the happiness of his people, yet that the same 
engine, in other hands, who might assume the right to use it with the 
like pretensions of reason and authority that he himself alleges, w^ould 
more frequently shut out truth and obstruct the means of salvation ; 
he would be bound by this opinion, still admitting public utility to be 
the supreme rule of conduct, to refrain from expedients which, what- 
ever particular effects he may expect from them, are. in their general 
operation, dangerous or hurtful. If there be any difficulty in the sub- 
ject, it arises from that which is the cause of every difficulty in morals, 
the competition of particular and general consequences : or, what is 
the same thing, the submission of one general rule to another rule 
which is still more general. 

Bearing then in mind, that it is the g^Tiera/ tendency of the measure, 
or, in other words, the effects which would arise from the measure 
being generally adopted, that fixes upon it the character of rectitude 
or injustice ; we proceed to inquire what is the degree and the sort of 
interference of secular laws in matters of religion winch are likely to 
be beneficial to the public happiness. There are two maxims which 
will in a great measure regulate our conclusions upon this head. The 
first is, that any form of Christianity is better than no religion at all ; 
the second, ibat, of different systems of faith^ that is the best which is 
the truest. The first of these positions will hardly be disputed, when 
we reflect that every sect and modification of Christianity holds out the 
happiness and miser}' of another life, as depending chiefly upon the 
practice of virtue or of vice in this ; and that the distinctions of virtue 
and vice are nearly the same in all. A person who acts under the im- 
pression of these hopes and fears, though combined with many errors 
and superstitions, is more likely to advance both the public happiness 
and his ovvn, than one who is destitute of all expectation of a future 
account. The latter proposition is founded in the consideration that 
the principal importance of religion consists in its influence upon the 
fate and condition of a future existence. This influence belongs only 
to that religion which comes from God. A political rehgion may be 
framed, which shall embrace the purposes, and describe the duties of 
political society perfectly well : but if it be not delivered by God, what 
assurance does it afford that the decisions of the Divine judgment will 
have any regard to the rules which it contains ? By a man who acts 
with a view to a future judgment, the authority ol a religion is the 
first thing inquired after : a religion which wants authority, with him 
wants everything. Since then this authority appertains not to the 
religion which is most commodious— to the religion which is most 
sublime and efficacious, — to the religion which suits best with the form 
or seems most calculated to uphold the power and stability of civil 
o^oYorirment, — but only to that religion w^hich comes from God : we 



RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND fOLli^RATION. 273 

are justified in pronouncin*^ the trice religion by its very truth, and in- 
dependently of all considerations of tendencies, aptness, or any other 
internal qualities whatever, to be universally the best. 

From the first proposition follows this inference, that when the state 
enables its subjects to learn so?ne form of Christianity, by distributing 
teachers of a religious system throughout the country, and by provid- 
ing for the maintenance of these teachers at the public expense ; that 
is, in fewer terms, when the laws establish a national religion, they 
exercise a power and an interference which are likely, in their general 
tendency, to promote the interests of mankind : for, even supposing 
the species of Christianity which the laws patronize to be erroneous 
and corrupt, yet when the option lies between this religion and no re- 
ligion at all, (which would be the consequence of leaving the people 
without any public means of instruction, or any regular celebration of 
the offices of Christianity,) our proposition teaches us that the former 
alternative is constantly to be preferred. 

But after the right of the magistrate to establish a particular religion 
has been, upon this principal admitted ; a doubt sometimes presents it- 
self whether the religion which he ought to establish be that which 
he himself professes, or that which he observes to prevail among the 
majority of the people. Now when we consider this question with 
a view to the formation of a general rule upon the subject (which view 
alone can furnish a just solution of the doubt,) it must be assumed to 
be an equal chance whether of the two religions contains more of 
truth, — that of the magistrate, or that of the people. . The chance then 
that is left to truth being equal upon both suppositions, the remaining 
consideration will be, from which arrangement more efficacy can be 
expected; from an order of men appointed to teach the people their 
own religion, or to convert them to another ? In my opinion, the ad- 
vantage lies on the side of the former scheme : and this opinion, if it 
be assented to, makes it the duty of the magistrate, in the choice of 
the religion which he establishes, to consult the faith of the nation 
rather than his own. 

The case also of dissenters must be determined by the principles just 
now stated. Toleration is of two kinds : — the allowing to dissenters 
the unmolested profession and exercise of their religion, but with an 
exclusion from offices of trust and emolument in the state ; which is 
B, partial toleration : and the admitting them,without distinction, to all 
the civil privileges and capacities of other citizens ; which is a complete 
toleration. The expediency of toleration, and consequently the right 
of every citizen to demand it as far as relates to liberty of conscience, 
and the claim of being protected in the free and safe profession of his 
religion, is deducible from the second of those propositions which we 
have delivered as the grounds of our conclusions upon the subject. 
That proposition asserts truth, and truth in the abstract, to be the su- 
preme perfection of every religion. The advancement, consequently, 
and discovery of truth is that end to which all regulations concerning 
religion ought principally to be adapted. Now every species of in- 
tolerance which enjoins suppression and silence, and every species pf 

M 2 



274 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 

persecution which enforces such injunctions, is adverse to the progress 
of truth ; forasmuch as it causes that to be fixed by one set of men, 
at one tune, which is much better, and with much more probabihty of 
success, left to the independent and progressive inquiry of separate 
individuals. Truth results from discussion and from controversy : is 
investigated by the labors and researches of private persons. What- 
ever, therefore, prohibits these obstructs that industry and that liberty 
which it is the common interest of mankind to promote. In religion, 
as in other subjects, truth, if left to itself, will almost always obtain 
the ascendancy. If different religions be professed in the same country, 
and the minds of men remain unfettered and unawed by intimidations 
of law, that religion which is founded in maxims of reason and credi- 
bility will gradually gain over the other to it. I do not mean that 
men will formally renounce their ancient religion, but that they will 
adopt into it the more rational doctrines, the improvements and dis- 
coveries of the neighboring sect; by which means the worse religion, 
without the ceremony of a reformation, will insensibly assimilate it- 
self to the better. If popery, for instance, and Protestantism were per- 
mitted to dwell quietly together, papists might not become Protestants 
(for the name is commonly the last thing that is changed,)* but they 
would become more enlightened and informed; they would by little 
and little incorporate into their creed many of the tenets of Protestant- 
ism, as well as imbibe a portion of its spirit and moderation. 

The justice and expediency of toleration we found primarily in its 
conduciveness to truth, and in the superior value of truth to that of any 
other quality which a religion can possess : this is the principal argu- 
ment, but there are some auxiliary considerations too important to be 
omitted. The confining of the subject to the religion of the state is a 
needless violation of natural liberty, and is an instance in which con- 
straint is always grievous. Persecution produces no sincere convic- 
tion, nor any real change of opinion : on the contrary, it vitiates the 
public morals, by driving men to prevarication ; and commonly ends 
in a general though secret infidelity, by imposing, under the name of 
revealed religion, systems of doctrine which men cannot believe, and 
dare not examine : finally, it disgraces the character, and wounds the 
reputation of Christianity itself, by making it the author of oppression, 
cruelty, and bloodshed. 

Under the idea of religious toleration. I include the toleration of all 
books of serious argumentation : but I deem it no infringement of re- 
ligious liberty to restrain the circulation of ridicule, invective, and 
mockery upon religious subjects ; because this species of writing ap- 
plies solely to the passions, weakens the judgment, and contaminates 
the imagination of its readers ; has no tendency whatever to assist 
either the investigation or the impression of truth; on the contrary, 
while it stays not to distinguish between the authority of different re- 
ligions, it destroys alike the influence of all. 

* Would we let the name stand, we might often attract men, without their perceiv- 
ing it, much nearer to ourselves than, if they did perceive it, they would be wiliinjjt 
to come. 



RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS AND TOLERATION. 275 

Concerning the admission of dissenters from the established religion 
to offices and in employments in the public service (which is necessary, 
to render toleration complete) doubts have been entertained, with some 
appearance of reason. It is possible that such religious opinions may 
be holden as are utterly incompatible with the necessary functions of 
civil government ; and which opinions consequently disqualify those 
who maintain them from exercising any share in its administration. 
There have been enthusiasts who held that Christianity has abolished 
all distinction of property, and that she enjoins upon her followers a 
community of goods. With what tolerable propriety could one of 
this sect be appointed a judge or a magistrate, whose office it is to de- 
cide upon questions of private right, and to protect men in the exclu- 
sive enjoyment of their property r It would be equally absurd to 
intrust a military command to a Quaker, who believes it to be con- 
trary to the Gospel to take up arms. This is possible ; therefore it 
cannot be laid down as a universal truth, that religion is not, in its 
nature, a cause which will justify exclusion irom public employments. 
When we examine, however, the sects of Christianity which actually 
prevail in the world, we must confess that, with the single exception 
of refusing to bear arms, we find no tenet in any of them which in- 
capacitates men for the service of the state. It has indeed been as- 
serted, that discordancy of religions, even supposing each religion to 
be free from any errors that affect the safety or the conduct of govern- 
ment, is enough to render men unfit to act together in public stations. 

But upon what argument, or upon what experience, is this assertion 
founded 1 I perceive no reason why men of different religious per- 
suasions may not sit upon the same bench, deliberate in the same coun- 
cils, or fight in the same ranks, as well as men of various or opposite 
opinions upon any controverted topic of natural philosophy, history, 
or ethics. 

There are two cases in which test-laws are wont to be applied ; and 
m which, if in any, they may be defended. One is, where two or more 
religions are contending for establishment, and where there appears no 
way of putting an end to the contest but by giving to one religion 
such a decided superiority in the legislature and government of the 
country as to secure it against danger from any other. I own that I 
should assent to this precaution with many scruples. If the dissenters 
from the establishment become a majority of the people, the establish- 
ment itself ought to be altered or qualified. If there exist among the 
different sects of the country such a parity of numbers, interest, and 
power, as to render the preference of one sect to the rest, and the choice 
of that sect, a matter of hazardous success, and of doubtful election, 
some plan similar to that which is meditated in North America, and 
which we have described in a preceding part of the present chapter, 
though encumbered with great difficulties, may perhaps suit better, with 
this divided state of public opinion, than any constitution of a national 
church whatever. In all other situations, the establishment will be 
strong enough to maintain itself. However, if a test be applicable 
with justice upon this principle at all, it ought to be applied in regal 



276 RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMEIS Af«D TOLERATION. 

governments to the chief magistrate himself, whose power might other- 
wise overthrow or change the established religion of the country, in 
opposition to the will and sentiments of the people. 

The second case of exclusion, and in which I think, the measure is 
more easily vindicated, is that of a country in which some disaffection 
to the subsisting government happens to be connected with certain re- 
ligious distinctions. The state undoubtedly has a right to refuse its 
power and its confidence to those who seek its destruction. Where- 
fore, if the generality of any religious sect entertain dispositions hos- 
tile to the constitution, and if government have no other way of know- 
ing its enemies than by the religion which they profess, the professors 
of that religion may justly be excluded from offices of trust and authority. 
But even here it should be observed, that it is not against the religion 
that government shuts its doors, but against those political principles, 
which, however independent they may be of any article of religious 
faith, the members of that communion are found in fact to hold. Nor 
would the legislator mal^e religious tenets the test of men's inclina- 
tions towards the state, if he could discover any other that was equal- 
ly certain and notorious. Thus, if the members of the Romish church, 
for the most part, adhere to the interests, or maintain the right, of a 
foreign pretender to the crown of these kingdoms: and if there be no 
way of distinguishing those who do from those who do not retain such 
dangerous prejudices ; government is well warranted in fencing out 
the whole sect from situations of trust and power. But even in this 
example it is not to popery that the laws object, but to popery as the 
mark of jacobitism ; an equivocal, indeed, and falacious mark, but the 
best, and perhaps the only one that can be devised. But then it should 
be remembered, that as the connection between popery and jacobitism, 
which is the sole cause of suspicion, and the sole justification of those 
severe and jealous laws which have been enacted against the profes- 
sors of that religion, was accidental in its origin, so probably it will be 
temporary in its duration ; and that these restrictions ought not to con- 
tinue one day longer than some visible danger renders them necessary to 
the preservation of public tranquillity 

After all. it may be asked, why should not the legislator direct his 
test against the political principles themselves which he wishes to ex- 
clude, rather than encounter them through the medium of religious 
tenets, the only crim.e and the only danger of which consists in their 
presumed alliance vrith the former ? Why, for example, should a 
man be required to renounce transubstantiation, before he be admitted 
to. an office in the state, when it might seem to be sufficient that he 
adjure the pretender? There are but tvro answers that can be given 
to the objection which this question contains : first, that it is not 
opinions which the laws fear so much as inclinations ; and fhat po- 
litical inclinations are not so easily detected by the affirmation or de- 
nial of any abstract proposition in politics, as by the discovery of the 
religious creed with which they are wont to be united ; — secondly, 
that when men renounce their religion, they commonly quit all con- 
nexion with the members of the church which they have left ; that 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 277 

church no longer expecting assistance or friendship from them ; where- 
as particular persons might insinuate themselves into offices of trust 
and authority, by subscribing political assertions, and yet retain ihe'v 
predilection for the interests of the religious sect to which they con 
tinue to belong. By which means, government would sometimes find* 
though it could not accuse the individual whom it had received into 
its service of disafiection to the civil establishment, yet that, through 
him, it had communicated the aid and influence of a powerful station 
to a party who were hostile to the constitution. These answers, how- 
ever, we propose rather than defend. The measure certainly cannot 
be defended at all, except where the suspected union between certain 
obnoxious principles in politics and certain tenets in religion is nearly 
universal ; in which case it makes little difference to the subscriber, 
whether the test be religious or political ; and the state is somewhat 
better secured by the one than the other. 

The result of our examination of those general tendencies, by 
which every interference of civil government in matters of religion 
ought to be tried, is this : '• That a comprehensive national religion, 
guarded by a few articles of peace and conformity, together with a 
legal provision for the clergy of that religion ; and with a complete 
toleration of all dissenters from the established church, without any 
other limitation or exception than what arises from the conjunction of 
dangerous political dispositions with certain religious tenets ; appears 
to be, not only the most just and liberal, but the wisest and safest 
system which a state can adopt; inasmuch as it unites the several 
perfections which a religious constitution ought to aim at — liberty of 
conscience, with means of iuvstruction ; the progress of truth, w^th the 
peace of society ; the right of private judgment, with the care of the 
public safety." 



CHAPTER XI. 

OF POPULATION AND PROVISION ; AND OF AGRICULTURE AND COM 
MERGE, AS SUBSERVIENT THERETO. 

The final view of all rational politics is to produce the greatest 
quantity of happiness in a given tract of country. The riches, 
strength, and glory of nations — the topics which history celebrates, 
and which alone almost engage the praises and possess the admira- 
tion of mankind — have no value farther than as they contribute to this 
end. When they interfere with it, they are evils, and not the less 
real for the splendor that surrounds them. 

Secondly, Although we speak of communities as of sentient beings; 
although we ascribe to them happiness and misery, desires, interests, 
and passions ; nothing really exists or feels but individuals. The 
happiness of a people is made up of the happiness of single persons; 
and the quantity of happiness can only be augmented by increasing the 
number of the percipients, or the pleasure of their perceptions. 



278 POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 

Thirdly, Notwithstanding that diversity of condition, especially 
different degrees of plenty, freedom, and security, greatly vary the 
quantity of happiness enjoyed by the same number of intiiviiu- 
als; and notwithstanding that extreme cases may be found, of human 
beings so galled by the rigors of slavery that the increase of numbers 
is only the amplification of misery : yet within certain limits, and 
within those hmits to which civil life is diversified under the tempe- 
rate governments that obtain in Europe, it may be affirmed, I think, 
with certainty, that the quantity of happiness produced in any given 
district so far depends upon the number of inhabitants, that, in com- 
paring adjoining periods in the same country, the collective happiness 
will be nearly in the exact proportion of the numbers : that is, twice 
the number of inhabitants will produce double the quantity of happi- 
ness : in distant periods, and dilTerent countries, under great changes 
or great dissimilitude of civil condition, although the proportion of en- 
joyment may fall much short of that of the numbers, yet still any con- 
siderable excess of numbers will usually carry with it a prepondera- 
tion of happiness: that, at least, it may and ought to be assumed in 
all pohtical deliberations, that a larger portion of happiness is en- 
joyed among ten persons possessing the means of healthy subsis- 
tence, than can be produced by five persons under every advantage 
of power, affluence, and luxury. 

From these principles it follows, that the quantity of happiness in 
a given district, although it is possible it may be increased, the num- 
ber of inhabitants remaining the same, is chiefly and most naturally 
affected by alteration of the numbers : that, consequently, the decay 
of population is the greatest evil that a state can suffer ; and the im- 
provement of it the object which ought, in all countries, to be aimed 
at, in preference to every other political purpose whatsoever. 

The importance of population, and the superiority of it to every 
other national advantage, are points necessary to be inculcated and 
to be understood* inasmuch as false estimates, or fantastic notions of 
national grandeur, are perpetually drawing the attention of statesmen 
and legislators from the care of this, which is at all times the true 
and absolute interest of a country : for w^hich reason we have stated 
these points with unusual formality. We will confess, however, 
that a competition can seldom arise between the advancement of popu- 
lation and any measure of sober utility; because, in the ordinary 
progress of human affairs, whatever in any way contributes to 
make a people happier, tends to render them more numerous. 

In the fecundity ot the human, as of every other species of animals, 
nature has provided for an indefinite multiplication. Mankind have 
increased to their present number from a single pair : the offspring of 
early marriages, in the ordinary course of procreation, do more than 
replace their parents . in countries, and under circumstances very fa- 
vorable to subsistence, the population has been doubled in the space 
of twenty years ; the havoc occasioned by wars, earthquakes, famine, 
or pestilence, is usually repaired in a short time. These indications 
sufficiently demonstrate the tendency of nature in the human species 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 279 

to a continual increase of its numbers. It becomes, therefore, a ques- 
tion that may reasonably be propounded, what are the causes which 
confine or check the natural progress of this multiplication ? And 
the answer which first presents itself to the thoughts of the inquirer is, 
that the population of a country must stop when the country can 
maintain no more, that is, when the inhabitants are already so nume- 
rous as to exhaust all the provision which the soil can be made to 
produce. This, however, though an insuperable bar, will seldom be 
found to be that which actually checks the progress of population in 
any country of the world ; because the number of the people have 
seldom, in any country, arrived at this limit^ or even approached to it. 
The fertility of the ground, in temperate regions, is capable of being 
improved by cultivation to an extent which is unknown ; much, how- 
ever, beyond the state of improvement in any country of Europe. In 
our own, which holds almost the first place in the knowledge and en- 
couragement of agriculture, let it only be supposed that every field in 
England, of the same original quality with those in the neighborhood 
of the metropolis, and consequently capable of the same fertility, were 
by a like management made 'o } iek' an equal produce ; and it may be 
asserted, I believe with truth, that the quantity of human provision 
raised in the island would be increased five-fold. The two principles, 
therefore, upon which population seems primarily to depend, the fe- 
cundity of the species, and the capacity of the soil, would in most, 
perhaps in all countries, enable it to proceed ir ich farther than it has 
yet advanced. The number of marriageable women who in each 
country remain unmarried afford a c" aputation how much the 
agency of nature in the diffusion of human life is cramped and con- 
tracted; and the quantity of waste, neglected, or mismanaged surface, 
together with a comparison, like the preceding, of the crops raised 
from the soil in the neighborhood of populous cities, and under a per- 
fect state of cultivation, with those which lands of equal or superior 
quality yield in different situations, will show in what proportion the 
indigenous productions of the earth are capable of being farther 
augmented. 

The fundamental proposition upon the subject of population^ which 
must guide every endeavor to improve it, and from which every con- 
clusion concerning it may be deduced, is this: "Wherever the com- 
merce between the sexes is regulated by marriage, and a provision for 
thaf mode of subsistence, to which each class of the community is ac- 
customed, can be procured with ease and certainty, there the numbei 
of the people will increase; and the rapidity, as well as the extent, of 
the increase, will be proportioned to the degree in which these causes 
exist. 

This proposition we will draw" out into the several principles which 
it contains. 

1. First, the proposition asserts the ''necessity of confining the in- 
tercourse of the sexes to the marriage union." It is only in the mar- 
riage union that this intercourse is sufficiently prolific. Besides which, 
family establishments alone are fitted to perpetuate a succession of 
generations. The offspring of a vague and promiscuous concubinage 



280 POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 

are not only few, and liable to perish by neglect, but are seldom pre- 
pared for or introduced into situations suited to the raising of families 
of their own. Hence the advantages of marriages. Now nature, in 
the constitutions of the sexes, has provided a stimulus which will in- 
fallibly secure the frequency of marriages, with all their beneficial 
effects upon the state of population, provided the male part of the 
species be prohibited from irregular gratifications. This impulse, 
which is sufficient to surmount almost every impediment to marriage, 
will operate in proportion to the difficulty, expense, danger, or infamy, 
the sense of guilt, or the fear of punishment, which attends licentious 
indulgences. Wherefore, in countries in which subsistence is become 
scarce, it behooves the state to watch over the public morals with in- 
creased solicitude; for nothing but the instinct of nature, under the 
restraint of chastity, will induce men to undertake the labor, or consen- 
to the sacrifice of personal liberty and indulgence, which the support 
of a family in such circumstances requires. 

2. The second requisite which our proposition states as necessewy 
to the success of population, is, "the ease and certainty with which 
a provision can be procured for*that mode of subsistence to which 
each class of the community is accustomed." It is not enough that 
men's natural wants be supplied; that a provision adequate to the 
real exigencies of human life be attainable : habitual superfluities be- 
come actual wants; opinion and fashion convert articles of ornament 
and luxury into necessaries of life. Audit must not be expected from 
men in general, at least in the present relaxed state of morals and dis- 
cipline, that they will enter into marriages which degrade their condi- 
tion, reduce their mode of living, deprive them of ttie accommodations 
to which they have been accustomed, or even of those ornaments or 
appendages of rank and station which they have been taught to regard 
as belonging to their birth, or class, or profession, or place in society. 
The same consideration, namely, a view to their accustomed mode of 
life, which is so apparent m the superior orders of the people, has no 
less influence upon those ranks which compose the mass of the com- 
munity. The kind and quality of food and liquor, the species of 
habitation, furniture, and clothing, to which the common people of 
each country are habituated, must be attainable with ease and cer- 
tainty, before marriages will be sufficiently early and general to carry 
the progress of population to its just extent. It is in vain to allege, 
that a more simple diet, ruder habitations, or coarser apparel, would 
be sufficient for the purposes of life and health, or even of physical 
ease and pleasure. Men will not marry with this encouragement. 
For instance, when the common people of a country are accustomed 
to eat a large proportion of animal food, to drink wine, spirits, or 
beer, to wear shoes and stockings, to dwell in stone houses, they will 
not marry to live in clay cottages, upon roots and milk, with no 
other clothing than skins, or what is necessary to defend the trunk of 
the body from the effiscts of cold ; although these last may be all 
that the sustentation of life and health requires, or even that contri- 
bute much to animal comfort and enjoyment. 

The ease, then, and certainty with which the means can be procured 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. iI8l 

not barely of subsistence, but of that mode of subsisting whicfi custom 
iiath in each country established, foim the point upon which the state 
and progress of population chiefly depend. Now there are three causes 
which evidently regulate this point : The mode itself of subsisting 
which prevails in the country; the quantity of provision suited to that 
mode of subsistence, which is either raised in the country, or imported 
into it; and, lastly, the distribution of that provision. 

These three causes merit distinct consideration. 

1 . The mode of living which actually obtains in a country. In China, 
where the inhabitants frequent the sea-shore, or the banks of large 
rivers, and subsist in a great measure upon fish, the population is de- 
scribed to be excessive. This peculiarity arises, not probably from 
any civil advantages, any care or policy, any particular constitution or 
superior wisdom of government ; but simply from hence, that the 
species of food to which custom hath reconciled the desires and in- 
clinations of the inhabitants, is that which, of all others, is procured 
in the greatest abundance, with the most ease, and stands in need of 
the least preparation. The natives of Hindostan being confined, by the 
laws of their religion, to the use of vegetable food, and requiring little 
except rice, which the country produces in plentiful crops ; and food, 
in warm climates, composing the only want of life ; these countries 
are populous, under all the injuries of a despotic, and the agitations of 
an unsettled government. If any revolution, or what would be called 
perhaps refinement of manners, should generate in these people a taste 
for ihe flesh of animals, similar to what prevails among the Arabian 
hordes : should introduce flocks and herds into grounds which are now 
coveied with corn ; should teach them to account a certain portion of 
this species of food among the necessaries of life ; the population from 
this single change, would suffer in a few years a great diminution : 
and this diminution would follow, in spite of every effort of the laws, 
or even of any improvement that might take place in their civil con- 
dition. In Ireland, the simplicity of living alone maintains a con- 
siderable degree of population, under great defects of police, industry, 
and commerce. 

Under this head, and from a view of these considerations, may be 
understood the true evil and proper danger of luxury. 

Luxury, as it supplies employment and promotes industry, assists 
population. But then there is another consequence attending it, which 
counteracts and often overbalances these advantages. When, by in- 
troducing more superfluities into general reception, luxury has rendered 
the usual accommodations of life more expensive, artificial, and elabo- 
rate, the difficulty of maintaining a family, comformably with the estab- 
lished mode of living, becomes greater, and what each man has to spare 
from his personal consumption proportionably less : the effect of which 
is, that marriages grow less frequent, agreeably to the maxim above 
laid down, and which must be remembered as the foundation of all 
our reasoning upon the subject, that men will not marry to sink their 
place or condition in society, or to forego those indulgences which 
their own habits, or what they observe among their equals, have ren- 



282 POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 

dered necessary to their satisfaction. This principle is apph'cable to 
every article of diet and dress, to houses, furniture, attendance ] and 
this effect will be felt in every class of the community. For instance, 
the custom of wearing broadcloth and fine linen repays the shepherd 
and flax grower, feeds the manufacturer, enriches the merchant, gives 
not only support but existence to multitudes of families : hitherto, there- 
fore, the effects are beneficial ] and were these the only effects, such 
elegancies, or, if you please to call them so, such luxuries, could not 
be too universal. But here follows the mischief : when once fashion 
hath annexed the use of these articles of dress to any certain class, the 
middling ranks, for example, of the community, each individual of that 
rank finds them to be necessaries of life ; that is, finds himself obliged 
to comply with the example of his equals, and to maintain that ap- 
pearance which the custom of society requires. This obligation cre- 
ates such a demand upon his income, and adds so much to the cost and 
burden of a family, as to put it out of his power to marry, with the 
prospect of continuing his habits, or of maintaining his place and situa- 
tion in the world. We see in this description the cause which induces 
men to waste their lives in a barren celibacy ] and this cause, which 
impairs the very source of population, is justly placed to the account 
of luxury. 

It appears, then, that luxury^ considered with a view to population, 
acts by two opposite effects ; and it seems probable that there exists a 
point in the scale to which luxury may ascend, or to which the wants 
of mankind may be multiplied w^ith advantage to the community, and 
beyond which the prejudicial consequences begin to preponderate. The 
determination of this point, though it assume the form of an arithme- 
tical problem, depends upon circumstances too numerous, intricate, and 
undefined, to admit of a precise solution. However, from what has 
been observed concerning the tendency of luxury to diminish maniages, 
in which tendency the evil of it resides, the following general conclu- 
sion may be established : — 

1st, That, of different kinds of luxury, those are the most innocent, 
which afford employment to the greatest number of artists and manu- 
facturers ] or those, in other words, in which the price of the work 
bears the greatest proportion to that of the raw material. Thus, luxury 
;m dress or furniture is universally preferable to luxury in eating, be- 
cause the articles which constitute the one are more the production of 
human art and industry than those which supply the other. 

2dly, That it is the diffusioit^ rather than the degree of luxury, which 
is to be dreaded as a national evil. The mischief of luxury consists, 
as we have seen, in the obstruction which it forms to marriage. Now 
it is only a small part of the people that the higher ranks in any country 
compose ] for which reason, the facility or the difficulty of supporting 
the expense of their station, and the consequent increase or diminu- 
tion of marriages among them, will influence the state of population 
but little. So long as the prevalency of luxury is confined to a few^ of 
elevated rank, much of the benefit is felt, and little of the inconveniency. 
But when the imitation of the same manners descends, as it always 



POPULATION. PROVISION, ETC. 283 

will do, into the mass of the people ; when it advances the requisites 
of living beyond what it adds to men's abilities to purchase them ] then 
it is that luxury checks the formation of families, in a degree that 
ought to alarm the public fears. 

3dly, That the condition most favorable to population is that of a 
laborious, frugal people, ministering to the demands of an opulent, 
luxurious nation ; because this situation, while it leaves them every 
advantage of luxury, exempts them from the evils which naturally ac- 
company its admission into any country. 

2. Next to the mode of living, we are to consider " the quantity of 
provision suited to that mode, which is either raised in the country, or 
imported into it;" for this is the order in which we assigned the causes 
of population, and undertook to treat of them. Now, if we measure 
the quantity of provision by the number of human bodies it will sup- 
port in due health and vigor, this quantity, the extent and quality of 
the soil from which it is raised being given^ will depend greatly upon 
the kind. For instance, a piece of ground capable of supplying ani- 
mal food sufficient for the subsistence of ten persons, would sustain at 
least the double of that number with grain, roots, and milk. The first 
resource of savage life is in the flesh of wild animals: hence the 
numbers among savage nations, compared with the tract of country 
which they occupy, are universally small, because this species of pro- 
vision is, of all others, supplied in the slenderest proportion. The 
next step was the invention of pasturage, or the rearing of flocks and 
herds of tame animals : this alteration added to the stock of provision 
much. But the last and principal imprc- cment was to follow : name- 
ly, tillage, or the artificial production wf corn, esculent plants and 
roots. This discovery, while it changed the quality of human food, 
augmented the quantity in a vast proportion. So far as the state of 
population is governed and limited by the quantity of provision, per- 
haps there is no single cause that affects it so powerfully as the kind 
and quality of food which chance or usage hath introduced into a 
country. In England, notwithstanding the produce of the soil has 
been of late considerably increased by the enclosure of wastes, 
and the adoption, in many p'aces, of a more successful husbandry, 
yet we do not observe a corresponding addition to the number of in- 
habitants: the reason of which appears to me to be the more general 
consumption of animal food among us. Many ranks of people whose 
ordinary diet was, in the last century, prepared almost entirely from 
milk, roots, and vegetables, now require every day a considerable por- 
tion of the flesh of animals. Hence a great part of the richest lands 
of the country is converted to pasturage. Much also of the bread 
corn which went directly to the nourishment of human bodies, now 
vnly contributes to it by fattening the flesh of sheep and oxen. The 
mass and volume of provisions are hereby diminished ; and what is 
gained in the melioration of the soil, is lost in the quality of the pro- 
duce. This consideration teaches us, that tillage, as an object of na- 
tional care and encouragement, is universally preferable to pasturage, 
because the kind of provision which it yields goes much farther in the 



284 POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 

sustentation of human life. Tillage is also recommended by this addi- 
tional advantage, that it affords employment to a much more numerous 
peasantry. Indeed, pasturage seems to be the art of a nation either 
imperfectly civilized, as are many of the tribes which cultivate it in 
the internal parts of Asia ; or of a nation like Spain, decHning from 
its summit by luxury and inactivity. 

The kind and quality of provision, together with the extent, and ca- 
pacity of the soil from which it is raised, being the same, the quantity 
procured will principally depend upon two circumstances, the ability 
of the occupier, and the encouragement which he receives. The 
greatest misfortune of a country is an indigent tenantry. Whatever 
be the native advantages of the soil, or even the skill and industry of 
the occupier, the want of a sufficient capital confines every plan, as 
well as cripples and weakens every operation of husbandry. This 
evil is felt, where agriculture is accounted a servile or mean employ- 
ment* where farms are extremely subdivided, and badly furnished 
with habitations ] where leases are unknown, or are of short or pre- 
carious duration. With respect to the encouragement of husbandry; 
in this, as in every other employment, the true reward of industry is 
in the price and sale of the produce. The exclusive right to the pro- 
duce is the only incitement which acts constantly and universally; 
the only spring which keeps human labor in motion. All, therefore, 
that the laws can do is to secure this right to the occupier of the 
ground; that is, to constitute such a system of tenure, that the full and 
entire advantage of every improvement go to the benefit of the impro- 
ver; that every man work for himself, and not for another; and that 
no one share in the profit who do js not assist in the production. By 
the occupier I here mean, not so much the person who performs the 
work, as him who procures the labor and directs the management: 
and! consider the whole profit\s received by the occupier, when the 
occupier is benefitted by the whole value of what is produced, which 
is the case with the tenant who pays a fixed rent for the use of land, 
no less than with the proprietor who holds it as his own The one 
has the same interest in the produce, and in the advantage of every 
improvement as the other. Likewise the proprietor, though he giant 
out his estate to farm, may be considered as the occupier^ inasmuch 
as he regulates the occupation by the choice, superintendency, and 
encouragement of his tenants, by the dispasition of his lands, by erec- 
ting buildings, providing accommodations, by prescribing conditions, 
or supplying implements and materials of improvement : and is enti- 
tled, by the rule of public expediency abovementioned, to receive, in 
the advance of his rent, a share of the benefit which arise from the 
increased produce of his estate. The violation of this fundamental 
maxim of agrarian policy constitutes the chief objection to the hold- 
ing of lands by the state, by the king, by corporate bodies, by private 
persons in right of their offices or benefices. The inconveniency to 
the public arises not so much from the unalienable quality of lands 
thus holden in perpetuity, as from hence, that proprietors of this de- 
scription seldom contribute much either of attention or expense to the 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC 285 

eultivation of their estates, yet claim, by the rent, a share in the profit 
of every improvement that is made upon them. This complaint can 
only be obviated by '• long leases at a fixed rent," which convey a 
large portion of the interest to those who actually conduct the cultiva- 
tion. The same objection is applicable to the holding of lands by 
foreign proprietors, and in some degree to estates of too great extent 
being placed in the same hands. 

3. Besides the production of provision, there remains to be consid- 
ered the DISTRIBUTION. It is in vain that provisions abound in the 
country, unless I be able to obtain a share of them. This reflection 
belongs to every individual. The plenty of provision produced, the 
quantity of the public stock affords subsistence to individuals, and en- 
couragement to the formation of families only in proportion as it is 
distributed^ that is, in proportion as these individuals are allowed to 
to draw from it a supply of their own wants. The distribution, there- 
fore, becomes of equal consequence to population with the production. 
Now there is but one principle of distribution that can ever become 
universal, namely, the principle " of exchange ;*' or, in other words, 
that every man have something to give in return for what he wants. 
Bounty, however it may come in aid of another principle, however it 
may occasionally qualify the rigor, or supply the imperfection of an 
established rule of distribution, can never itself become that rule or 
principle ] because men will not work to give the produce of their la- 
bor away. Moreover, the only equivalents that can be offered in ex- 
change for provision are power and labor. All property is povjer. 
What we call property in land, is the power to use it, and to exclude 
others from the use. Money is the representative of power, because 
it is convertible into power : the value of it consists in its faculty ot 
procuring power over things and persons. But power which results 
from civil conventions (and of this kind is what we call a man's for- 
tune or estate,) is necessarily confined to a few, and is withal soon ex 
hausted ] whereas the capacity of labor is every man's natural posses- 
sion, and composes a constant and renewing fund. The hire, there- 
fore, or produce of personal industry, is that which the bulk of every 
community must bring to market in exchange for the means of subsis- 
tence ] in other words, employment must, in every country, be the 
medium of distribution, and the source of supply to individuals. But 
when we consider the production and distribution of provision, as dis- 
tinct from and independent of each other ; when, supposing the same 
quantity, to be produced, we inquire in what way, or according to 
what rule, it may be distributed ; we are led to a conception of the 
subject not at all agreeable to truth and reality : for, in truth and re- 
ality, though provision must be produced before it be distributed, yet 
the production depends, in a great measure, upon the distribution. 
The quantity of provision raised out of the ground, so far as the 
raisins: of it requires human art or labor, will evidently be regulated 
by the demand : the demand, or, in other words, the price and sale 
being that which alone rewards the care, or excites the dihgence, of 
the hi] iba i:lman. But the sale of proviiion iepends upoii the number, 



286 POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 

not of those who v/ant, but of those who have something to offer in 
return for what they want ] not of those who would consume, but of 
those who can buy; that is, upon the number of those who have the 
fruits of some other kind of industry to tender in exchange for what 
they stand in need of from the production of the soil. 

We see, therefore, the connexion between population and em- 
ployment. Employment affects population "directly," as it affords 
the only medium of distribution by which individuals can obtain from 
the common stock a supply for the wants of their families ; it affects 
population "indirectly," as it augments the stock itself of provision, 
in the only way by which the production of it can be effectually en- 
couraged — by furnishing purchasers. No man can purchase without 
an equivalent ; and that equivalent, by the generality of the people, 
must in every country be derived from employment. 

And upon this basis is founded the public benefit of trade, that is to 
say, its subserviency to population, in which its only real utility con- 
sists. Of that industry, and of those arts and branches of trade, 
which are employed in the production, conveyance, and preparation 
of any principal species of human food, as of the business of the hus- 
bandman, the butcher, baker, brewer, corn-merchant, &c., we ac- 
knowledge the necessity ; likewise, of those manufacturers which fur- 
nish us w^ith warm clothing, convenient habitations, domestic utensils, 
as the weaver, tailor, smith, carpenter, &c., we perceive (in climates, 
however, like ours, removed at a distance from the sun) the condu- 
civeness to population, by their rendering human life more healthy, 
vigorous, and comfortable. But not one half of the occupations which 
compose the trade of Europe fall within either of these descriptions. 
Perhaps two thirds of the manufacturers in England are employed 
upon articles of confessed luxury, ornament, or splendor; in the su- 
perfluous embellishment of some articles which are useful in their 
kind, or upon others which have no conceivable use or value but what 
is founded in caprice or fashion. What can be less necessary, or less 
connected with the sustentation of human life, than the whole pro- 
duce of the silk, lace, and plate manufactory ? yet what multitudes 
labor in the different branches of these arts! What can be imagined 
more capricious than the fondness for tobacco and snuff? yet how 
many various occupations, and how many thousands in each, are set 
at work in administering to this frivolous gratification! Concerning 
trades of this kind (and this kind comprehends more than half of the 
trades that are exercised,) it may fairly be asked, "How, since they 
add nothing to the stock of provision, do they tend to increase the 
number of the people!" We are taught to say of trade, "that it 
maintains multitudes ;" but by what means does it maintain, them, 
when it produces nothing upon which the support of human life de- 
pends ? In like manner with respect to foreign commerce ; of that 
merchandise which brings the necessaries of life into a country, which 
imports, for example, corn, or cattle, or cloth, or fuel , we allow the 
tendency to advance population, because it increases the stock of pro- 
vision by which the people are subsisted. But this effect of foreign 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 287 

commerce is so little seen in oiir own country, that, I believe, it may 
be affirmed of Great Britain, what Bishop Berkeley said of a neigh- 
boring island, that if it were encompassed with a wall of brass fifty 
cubits high, the country might maintaia the same number of inhabi- 
tants that find subsistence in it at present ; and that every necessary, 
and even every real comfort and accommodation, of human life, might 
be supplied in as great abundance as they now are. Here, therefore, 
as before, w^e may fairly ask, by what operation it is that foreign com- 
merce, which brings into the country no one article of human subsis- 
tence, promotes the multiplication of human life. 

The answer of this inquiry will be contained in the discussion of 
another, viz.: 

Since the soil will maintain many more than it can employ, what 
must be done, supposing the country to be full, with the remainder of 
the inhabitants '? They who, by the rules of partition (and some such 
must be established in every country,) are entitled to the land ; and they 
who, by their labor upon the soil, acquire a right in its produce, will 
not part with their property for nothing ] or rather, they will no longer 
raise from the soil what they can neither use themselves nor exchange 
for what they want. Or, lastly, if these were willing to distribute 
what they could spare of the provision which the ground yielded, to 
others who had no share or concern in the property or cultivation 
of it, yet still the most enormous mischiefs would ensue from great 
numbers remaining unemployed. The idleness of one half of the 
community would overwhelm the whole wath confusion and disorder. 
One only way presents itself of removing the difficulty which this 
question states, and which is simply this ] that they, whose work is 
not wanted, nor can be employed in the raising of provision out of the 
ground, convert their hands and ingenuity to the fabrication of articles 
which may gratify and requite those who are so employed, or who, by 
the division of lands in the country, are entitled to the exclusive pos- 
session of certain parts of them. By this contrivance, all things pro- 
ceed well. The occupier of the ground raises from it the utmost that 
he can procure, because he is repaid for what he can spare by some- 
thing else which he wants, or with which he is pleased ; the artist or 
manufacturer, though he have neither any property in the soil, nor 
any concern in its cultivation, is regularly supplied with the produce, 
because he gives, in exchange for what he stands in need of, some- 
thing upon which the receiver places an equal value : and the commu- 
nity is kept quiet, while both sides are engaged in their respective oc- 
cupations. 

It appears, then, that the business of one half of mankind is to set 
the other half at work ; that is, to provide articles which, by tempting 
the desires, may stimulate the industry, and call forth the activity of 
those, upon the exertion of whose industry, and the application of 
whose faculties, the production of human provision depends. A cer- 
tain portion only of human labor is, or can be, productive ; the rest is 
instrumental j — both equally necessary, though the one have no other 
object than t^ excite the other. It appears also, that it signifies noth« 



288 POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC 

ing, as to the main purpose of trade, how superfluous the articles 
which it furnishes are; whether the want of them be real or imagi- 
nary; whether it be founded in nature or in opinion, in fashion, habit, 
or emulation : it is enough that they be actually desired and sought 
after. Flourishing cities are raised and supported by trading in to- 
bacco; populous town subsist by the manufacture of ribands. A 
watch may be a very unnecessary appendage to the dress of a peasant ; 
yet if the peasant will till the ground in order to obtain a watch, the 
true design of trade is answered ; and the watchmaker, while he po- 
lishes the case, or files the wheels of his machine, is contributing to 
the production of corn as effectually, though not so directly, as if he 
handled the spade or held the plough. The use of tobacco has been 
mentioned already, not only as an acknowledged superfluity, but as 
affording a remarkable example of the caprice of human appetite ; yet, 
if the fisherman will ply his nets, or the mariner fetch rice from 
foreign countries in order to procure to himself this indulgence, the 
market is supplied with two important articles of provision, by the in- 
strumentality of a merchandise which has no other apparent use than 
the gratificationof a vitiated palate. 

But it may come to pass that the husbandman, land owner, or who- 
ever he be that is entitled to the produce of the soil, will no longer 
exchange it for what the manufacturer has to offer. He is already 
supplied to the extent of his desires. For instance, he wants no more 
cloth; he will no longer, therefore, give the weaver corn in return for 
the produce of his looms ; but he would readily give it for tea or for 
wine. When the weaver finds this to be the case, he has nothing to 
do but to send his cloth abroad, in exchange for tea, or for wme, 
which he may barter for that provision which the offer of his cloth 
will no longer procure. The circulation is thus revived : and the 
benefit of the discovery is, that whereas the number of weavers who 
could find subsistence from their employment was before limited by 
the consumption of cloth in the country, that number is now augment- 
ed in proportion to the demand for tea and wine. This is the prin- 
ciple of foreign commerce. In the magnitude and complexity of the 
machine, the principle of motion is sometimes lost or unobserved : 
but it is always simple and the same, to whatever extent it may be di- 
versified and enlarged in its operation. 

The effect of trade upon agriculture, the process of which we lave 
been endeavoring to describe, is visible in the neighborhood of trading 
towns, and in those districts which carry on a communication witli 
the markets of trading towns. The husbandmen are bnisy and skill- 
ful ; the peasantry laborious ; the land is managed to the best advan- 
tage ; and double the quantity of corn or herbage (articles which are 
ultimately converted into human provision) raised from it, of what 
the same soil yields in remoter and more neglected parts of the coun- 
try. Wherever a thriving manufactory finds means to establish itself, 
a new vegetation springs up around it. I believe it is true that agri- 
culture never arrives at any considerable, much less at its highest 
degree of perfection, where it is not connected with trade, that is, 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 289 

where the demand for the produce is not increased by the consumption 
of trading cities. 

Let it be remembered, then, that agriculture is the immediate source 
of human provision; that trade conduces to the production cf provi- 
sion only as it promotes agriculture; that the whole system of com- 
merce, vast and various as it is, hath no other public importance than 
its subserviency to this end. 

We return to the proposition we laid down, " that employment 
universally promotes population." From this proposition it follows, 
that the comparative utility of different branches of national commerce 
is measured by the number which each branch employs. Upon which 
principle a scale may easily be constructed which shall assign to the 
several kinds and divisions of foreign trade their respective degrees of 
public importance. In this scale, the first place belongs to the ex- 
change of wrought goods for raw materials, as of broad-cloth for raw 
silk ; cutlery for w^ool ; clocks or watches for iron, flax, and furs ; 
because this traffic provides a market for the labor that has already 
been expended, at the same time that it supplies materials for new in- 
dustry. Population always flourishes where this species of commerce 
obtains to any considerable degree. It is the cause of employment, 
or the certain indication. As it takes off the manufactures of the 
country, it promotes employment ; as it brings in raw materials, it 
supposes the existence of manufactories in the country, and a dem.and 
for the article when manufactured. The second place is due to that 
commerce which barters one species of wrought goods for another, as 
stuffs for calicoes, fustians for cambrics, leather for paper, or wrought 
goods for articles which require no farther preparation, as for wine, 
oil, tea, sugar, &c. This also assists employment ', because, when the 
country is stocked with one kind of manufacture, it renews the demand 
by converting it into another : but it is inferior to the former, as it 
promotes this end by one side only of the bargain— by what it carries 
out. The last^ the lowest, and most disadvantageous species of com- 
mercC; is the exportation of raw materials in return for wrought goods; 
as when wool is sent abroad to purchase velvets ; hides or peltry, to 
pijcure shoes, hats, or linen cloth. This trade is unfavorable to popu- 
lation, because it leaves no room or demand for employment, either in 
what it takes out of the country, or in what it brings into it. Its 
operation on both sides is noxious. By its exports, it diminishes the 
very subjects upon which the industry of the inhabitants ought to be 
exercised : by its imports, it lessens the encouragement of that industry, 
in the same proportion that it supplies the consumption of the country 
with the produce of foreign labor. Of different branches of manufac- 
iure^ those are, in their nature, the most beneficial in which the price 
of the wrought article exceeds in the highest proportion that of the 
raw material : for this excess measures the quantity of employment, 
or, in other words, the number of manufacturers which each branch 
sustains. The produce of the ground is never the most advantageous 
article of foreign commerce. Under a perfect state of public economy, 
the soil of the country should be applied solely to the raising of pro- 

N 



290 POPULATION, PROVISION. ETC. 

visions for the inhabitants, and its trade be supplied by their industry. 
A nation will never reach its proper extent of population, so long as 
its principal commerce consists in the exportation of corn or cattle, or 
even of wine, oil, tobacco, madder, indigo, timber • because these last 
articles take up that surface which ought to be covered with the ma- 
terials of human subsistence. 

It must be here, however, noticed that we have all along considered 
the inhabitants of a country as maintained by the produce of the coun- 
try : and that what we have said is applicable with strictness to this 
supposition alone. The reasoning, nevertheless, may easily be adapt- 
ed to a different case : for when provision is not produced, but import- 
ed, what has been affirmed concerning provision will be, in a great 
measure, true of that article, whether it be money, produce, or labor, 
which is exchanged for provision. Thus, when the Dutch raise mad- 
der, and exchange it for corn ; or when the people of America plant 
tobacco, and send it to Europe for cloth ; the cultivation of madder and 
tobacco becomes as necessary to the subsistence of the inhabitants, 
and by consequence will affect the state of population in these coun- 
tries as sensibly as the actual production of food, or the manufacture 
©I raiment. In like manner, when the same inhabitants of Holland 
:'«,rn money by the carriage of the produce of one country to another, 
and with that money purchase the provision from abroad which their 
own land is not extensive enough to supply, the increase or decline 
of this carrying trade will influence the numbers of the people, no less 
than similar changes would do in the cultivation of the soil. 

The few principles already established w^ll enable us to describe the 
effects upon population which may be expected from the following 
important articles of national conduct and economy. 

1. Emigration. — Emigration may be either the overflowing of a 
country, or the desertion. As the increase of the species is indefinite ; 
and the number of inhabitants which any given tract or surface can 
support, finite ; it is evident that great numbers may be constantly 
leaving a country, and yet the country remain constantly full. Or, 
whatever be the cause which invincibly limits the population of a 
country ] when the number of people has arrived at that limit, the 
progress of generation, besides continuing the succession, will supply 
multitudes for foreign emigration. In these two cases, emigration 
neither indicates any political decay, nor in truth diminishes the num- 
ber of the people • nor ought to be prohibited or discouraged. But 
emigrants may relinquish their country, from a sense of insecurity, op- 
pression, annoyance, and inconveniency. Neither, again, here is it 
emigration which wastes the people, but the evils that occasion it. 
It would be in vain, if it were practicable, to confine the inhabitants 
at home : for the same causes which drive them out of the country, 
would prevent their multiplication if they remained in it. Lastly, men 
may be tempted to change their situation by the allurement of a better 
climate, of a more refined or luxurious manner of living • by the pros- 
pect of wealth ; or sometimes, by the mere nominal advantage of 
hi^Q^her wages and prices. This class of emigrants, with whom alone 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 291 

the laws can interfere with effect, will never, I think, be numerous. 
With the generality of a people, the attachment of mankind to their 
homes and countries, the irksomeness of seeking new habitations, and 
of living among strangers, will outweigh, so long as men possess the 
necessaries of life in safety, or at least so long as they can obtain a 
provision for that mode of subsistence which the class of citizens to 
which they belong are accustomed to enjoy, all the inducements that 
the advantages of a foreign land can oifer. There appear, therefore, 
to be few cases in which emigration can be prohibited with advan- 
tage to the state : it appears also that emigration is an equivocal 
symptom, which will probably accompany the decline of a political 
body, but which may likewise attend a condition of perfect health and 
vigor. 

2. Colonization. — The only view under which our subject will 
permit us to consider colonization is in its tendency to augment the 
population of he parent state. Suppose a fertile, but empty island, 
to lie within the reach of a country in which arts and manufactures 
are already estabhshed ; suppose a colony sent out from such a country, 
to take possession of the island, and to live thereunder the protection 
and authority of their native government : the new settlers will natu- 
rally convert their labor to the cultivation of the vacant soil, and with 
the produce of that soil will draw a supply of manufactures from their 
countrymen at home. While the inhabitants continue few, and lands 
cheap and fresh, the colonists will find it easier and more profitable to 
raise corn or rear cattle, and with corn and cattle to purchase woollen 
cloth, for instance, or linen, than to spin or weave these articles for 
themselves. The mother country, meanwhile, derives from this con- 
nexion an increase both of provision and employment. It promotes 
at once the two great requisites upon which the facility of subsistence, 
and by consequence the state of population, depend — production and 
distribution ; and this in a manner the most direct and beneficial. No 
situation can be imagined more favorable to population than that of 
a country which works up goods for others, while these others an- 
cultivating new tracts of land for them ] for as in a genial climate ana 
from a fresh soil, the labor of one man will raise provision enough foi 
ten, it is manifest that, where all are employed in agriculture, much 
the greater part of the produce will be spared from the consumption ; 
and that three out of four, at least, of those who are maintained by it, 
will reside in the country which receives the redundancy. When the 
new country does not remit provision to the old one, the advantage is 
less; but still the exportation of wrought goods, by whatever return 
they are paid for, advances population in that secondary way in which 
those trades promote it that are not employed in the production of pro- 
vision. Whatever prejudice, therefore, some late events have excited 
against schemes of colonization, the system itself is founded in appa- 
rent national utility; and what is more, upon principles favorable to 
the common interest of human nature : for it does not appear by what 
other method newly discovered and unfrequented countries can be 
peopled, or during the infancy of their establishment be protected or 



292 POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 

supplied. The error, which we of this nation at present lament, seems 
to have consisted not so much in the original formation of colonies, as 
in the subsequent management ; in imposing restrictions too rigorous, 
or in continuing them too long* in not perceiving the point of time 
when the irresistible order and progress of human affairs demand a 
change of laws and policy. 

3. Money. — Where money abounds, the people are generally nu- 
merous : yet gold and silver neither feed nor clothe mankind ; nor are 
they in all countries converted into provision by purchasing the ne- 
cessaries of life at foreign markets; nor do they, in any country, com- 
pose those articles of personal or domestic ornament which certain 
orders of the community have learned to regard as necessaries of life, 
and without the means of procuring which they will not enter into 
family establishments : at least this property of the precious metals 
obtains in a very small degree. The eifect of money upon the number 
of the people, though visible to observation, is not explained without 
some difficulty. To understand this connexion properly, we must re- 
turn to the proposition with which we concluded our reasoning upon 
the subject* ''that population is chiefly promoted by employment." 
Now, of employment, money is partly the indication, and partly the 
cause. The only way in which money regularly and spontaneously 
Jlows into a country is in return for the goods that are sent out of it, 
or the work that is performed by it ; and the only way in which money 
is retained in a country, is by th- country's supplying, in a great mea- 
sure, its own consumption of manufactures. Consequently, the quan- 
tity of money lound in a country denotes the amount of labor and 
employment : but still, employment, not money, is the cause of popu- 
lation ; the accumulation of money being merely a collateral effect of 
the same cause, or a circumstance which accompanies the existence, 
and measures the operation of that cause. And this is true of money, 
only while it is acquired by the industry of the inhabitants. The 
treasures which belong to a country by the possession of mines, or by 
the exaction of tribute from foreign dependencies, afford no conclusion 
concerning the state of population. 

The influx from these sources may be immense, and yet the country 
remain poor and ill-peopled; of which we see an egregious example 
in the condition of Spain, since the acquisition of its South American 
dominions. 

But, secondly, Money may become also a real and an operative 
cause of population, by acting as a stimulus to industry, and by facili- 
tating the means of subsistence. The ease of subsistence, and the en- 
couragement of industry, depend neither upon the price of labor, nor 
upon the price of provision, but upon the proportion which one bears 
to the other. Now the influx of money into a country naturally tends 
to advance this proportion ; that is, every fresh accession of money 
raises the price of labor before it raises the price of provision. When 
money is brought from abroad, the persons, be they who they will, into 
whose hands it first arrives, do not buy up provision with it, but 
applv it to the purchase and payment of labor. If the state receives 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 293 

it, the state dispenses what it receives among soldiers, sailors, artificers, 
engineers, shipwrights, workmen ; — if private persons bring home 
treasures of gold and silver, they usually expend them in the building 
of houses, the improvement of estates, the purchase of furniture, dress, 
equipage, in articles of luxury or splendor; — if the merchant be en- 
riched by returns of his foreign commerce, he apphes his increased 
capital to the enlargement of his business at home. The money ere 
long comes to market for provision ; but it comes thither through the 
hands of the manufacturer, the artist, the husbandman and laborer. 
Its effects, therefore, upon the price of art and labor will precede its 
effects upon the price of provision ; and during the interval between 
one effect and the other, the means of subsistence will be multiplied 
and facilitated, as well as industry be excited bv new rewards. When 
the greater plenty of money in circulation has produced an advance in 
the price of provision, corresponding to the advanced price of labor, 
its effect ceases. The laborer no longer gains anything by the increase 
of his wages. It is not, therefore, the quantity of specie collected into 
a country, but the continual increase of that quantity, from which the 
advantage arises to employment and population. It is only the acces- 
sion of money which produces the effect, and it is only by money con- 
stantly flowing into a country that the effect can be constant. Now, 
whatever consequence arises to the country from the influx of money, 
the contrary may be expected to follow from the diminution of its 
quantity : and accordingly we find, that whatever cause drains off* the 
specie of a country faster than the streams which feed it can supply, 
not only impoverishes the country, but depopulates it. The know- 
ledge and experience of this effect have given occasion to a phrase 
which occurs in almost every discourse upon commerce or politics. 
The balance of trade with any foreign nation is said to be against or 
in favor of a country, simply as it tends to carry money out, or bring 
it in ; that is, according as the price of the im.ports exceeds or falls 
short of the price of the exports : so invariably is the increase or 
diminution of the specie of a country regarded as a test of the public 
advantage or detriment which arises from any branch of its commerce. 
4. Taxation. — As taxes take nothing out of a country; as they do 
not diminish the public stock, only vary the distribution of it; they 
are not necessarily prejudicial to population. If the state exact money 
fromx certain members of the community, she dispenses it also among 
other members of the same community. They who contribute to the 
revenue, and they who are supported or benefited by the expenses of 
government, are to be placed one against the other : and while what 
the subsistence of one part is profiting by receiving, compensates, for 
what that of the other suffers by paying, the common fund of the 
society is not lessoned. This is true : but it must be observed, that 
although the sum distributed by the state be always equal to the sum 
collected from the people, yet the gain and loss to the means of sub- 
sistence maybe y^xj unequal ; and the balance will remain on the 
wrong or the right side of the account, according as the money passes 
by taxation from the industrious to the idle, from the many to the few, 



294 POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 

from those who want to those who abound, or in a contrary direction. 
For instance : a tax upon coaches, to be laid out in the repair of roads, 
would probably improve the population of a neighborhood ) a tax upon 
cottages, to be ultimately expended in the purchase and support of 
coaches, would certainly diminish it. In like manner, a tax upon wine 
or tea, distributed in bounties to fishermen or husbandmen, would aug- 
ment the provision of a country : a tax upon fishes and husbandry, how- 
ever indirect or concealed, to be converted, when raised, to the procur- 
ing of wine or tea for the idle and opulent, would naturally impair the 
public stock. The effect, therefore, of taxes upon the means of subsis- 
tence depends not so much upon the amount of the sum levied, as upon 
the object of the tax and the application. Taxes likewise may be so 
adjusted as to conduce to the restraint of luxury and the correction of 
vice ; to the encouragement of industry, trade, agriculture, and mar- 
riage. Taxes thus contrived become rewards and penalties ; not only 
sources of revenue, but instruments of police. Vices, indeed, them- 
selves cannot be taxed without holding forth such a conditional tolera- 
ration of them as to destroy men's perception of their guilt; a tax 
comes to be considered as a commutation : the materials, however, and 
incentives of vice may. Although, for instance, drunkenness would 
be, on this account, an unfit object of taxation, yet public houses and 
spirituous liquors are very properly subjected to heavy imposts. 

Nevertheless, although it may be true that taxes cannot be pro- 
nounced to be detrimental to population, by any absolute necessity in 
their nature; and though, under some modifications, and w^hen urged 
only to a certain extent, they may even operate in favor of it ] yet it 
will be found, in a great plurality of instances, that their tendency is 
noxious. Let it be supposed that nine families inhabit a neighbor- 
hood, each possessing barely the means of subsistence, or of that mode 
of subsistence which custom hath established among them; let a tenth 
family be quartered upon these, to be supported by a tax raised from 
the nine ; or rather, let one of the nine have his income augmented by 
a similar deduction from the incomes of the rest : in either of these 
cases, it is evident that the whole district would be broken up ; for as 
the entire income of each is supposed to be barely sufficient for the 
establishment which it maintains, a deduction of any part destroys that 
establishment. Now it is no answer to this objection, it is no apology 
for the grievance, to say, that nothing is taken out of the neighbor- 
hood ; that the stock is not diminished ; the mischief is done by de- 
ranging the distribution. Nor, again, is the luxury of one family, or 
even the maintenance of an additional family, a recompense to the 
country for the ruin of nine others. Nor, lastly, will it alter the effect, 
though it may conceal the cause, that the contribution, instead of be- 
ing levied directly upon each day's wages, is mixed up in the price of 
some articles of constant use and consumption, as in a tax upon can- 
dles, malt, leather, or fuel. This example illustrates the tendency of 
taxes to obstruct subsistence ; and the minutest degree of this obstruc- 
tion will be felt in the formation of families. The example, indeed, 
forms an extreme case ; the evil is magnified^ in order to render its 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. . 295 

operation distinct and visible. In real life, families may not be broken 
up, or forced from their habitation, houses be quitted, or countries sud- 
denly deserted, in consequence of any new imposition whatever; but 
marriages will become gradually less frequent. 

It seems necessary, however, to distinguish between the operation 
of a new tax, and the effect of taxes which have been long established. 
In the course of circulation, the money may flow back to the hands 
from which it was taken. The proportion between the supply and 
the expense of subsistence, which had been distributed by the tax, may 
at length recover itself again. In the instance just now stated, the 
addition of a tenth family to the neighborhood, or the enlarged ex- 
penses of one of the nine, may, in some shape or other, so advance 
the profits, or increase the employment, of the rest, as to make full 
restitution for the share of their property of which it deprives them ; 
or, what is more likely to happen, a reduction may take place in their 
mode of living, suited to the abridgment of their incomes. Yet still 
the ultimate and permanent effect of taxation, though distinguishable 
from the impression of a new tax, is generally adverse to population. 
The proportion above spoken of can only be restored by one side or 
other of the following alternative : by the people either contracting 
their wants, which at the same time diminishes consumption and em- 
ployment ; or by raising the price of labor, which necessarily adding 
to the price of the productions and manufactures of the country, checks 
their sale at foreign markets. A nation which is burdened with taxes 
must always be undersold by a nation which is free from them, unless 
the difference be made up by some singular advantage of climate, soil, 
skill, or industry. This quality belongs to all taxes which affect the 
mass of the community, even when imposed upon the properest objects 
and applied to the fairest purposes. But abuses are inseparable from 
the disposal of public money. As governments are usually adminis- 
tered, the produce of public taxes is expended upon a train of gentry, 
in the maintaining of pomp, or in the purchase of influence. The con- 
version of property which taxes effectuate, when they are employed in 
this manner, is attended with obvious evils. It takes from the indus- 
trious to give to the idle ; it increases the number of the latter ] it 
tends to accumulation ; it sacrifices the conveniency of many to the 
luxury of a few; it makes no return to the people, from whom the tax 
is drawn, that is satisfactory or intelligible ; it encourages no activity 
which is useful or productive. The sum to be raised being settled, a 
wise statesman will contrive his taxes principally with a view to their 
effect upon population ; that is, he will so adjust them as to give the 
least possible obstruction to those means of subsistence by which the 
mass of the community is maintained. We are accustomed to an 
opinion, that a tax, to be just, ought to be accurately proportioned to 
the circumstances of the persons who pay it. But upon what, it might 
be asked, is this opinion founded 1: unless it could be shown that such 
a proportion interferes the least with the general conveniency of sub- 
sistence : whereas I should rather believe, that a tax, constructed with 
a view to that conveniency, ought to rise upon the different classes of 



2d6 POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC 

the community in a much higher ratio than the simple proportion of 
their incomes. The point to be regarded is, not what men have, hut 
what they can spare ] and it is evident that a man who possesses a 
thousand pounds a year can more easily give up a hundred, than a 
man with a hundred pounds a year can part with ten : that is. those 
habits of life which are reasonable and innocent, and upon the ability 
to continue, which the formation of families depends, will be much less 
affected by the one deduction than the other. It is still more evident, 
that a man of a hundred pounds a year would not be so much dis- 
tressed in his subsistence, by a demand from him of ten pounds, as a 
man of ten pounds a year would by the loss of one : to which we 
must add, that the population of every country being replenished by 
the marriages of the lowest ranks of the society, their accommodation 
and relief become of more importance to the state than the conveniency 
of any higher but less numerous order of its citizens. But whatever 
be the proportion which public expediency directs, whether the simple, 
the duplicate, or any higher or intermediate proportion of men's in- 
comes, it can never be attained by any single tax ; as no single object 
of taxation can be found which measures the ability of the subject 
with sufficient generality and exactness. It is only by a system and 
Variety of taxes mutually balancing and equalizing one another, that 
a due proportion can be preserved. For instance : if a tax upon lands 
press wnth greater hardship upon those who live in the country, it may 
be properly counterpoised by a tax upon the rent of houses, which 
will affect principally the inhabitants of large towns. Distinctions 
nnay also be framed in some taxes, which shall allow abatements or 
exemptions to married persons ; to the parents of a certain number of 
legitimate children ; to improvers of the soil ; to particular modes of 
cultivation, as to tillage in preference to pasturage ] and in general to 
that industry which is immediately productive^ in preference to that 
which is only instrumental ; but, above all, which may leave the 
heaviest part of the burden upon the methods, whatever they be, of 
acquiring w^ealth without industry, or even of subsisting in idleness, 

5. Exportation of bread-corn. — Nothing seems to have a more 
positive tendency to reduce the number of the people than the sending 
abroad ptirt of the provision by which they are maintained ] yet this 
has been the poHcy of legislators very studious of the improvement of 
their country. In order to reconcile ourselves to a practice which ap- 
pears to militate with the chief interest, that is, with the population of 
the country that adopts it, we must be reminded of a maxim which 
belongs to the productions both of nature and art, " that it is impossible 
to have enough without a superfluity." The point of sufficiency can- 
not, in any case, be so exactly hit upon as to have nothing to spare, 
yet never to want. This is peculiarly true of bread-corn, of which the 
annual increase is extremely variable. As it is necessary that the crop 
be adequate to the consumption in a year of scarcity, it must, of con- 
sequence, greatly exceed it in a year of plenty. A redundancy, there- 
fore, will occasionally arise from the very care that is taken to secure 
the people against the danger of want j and it is manifest that the ex 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 297 

portation of this redundancy subtracts nothing from the number that 
can be regularly maintained by the produce of the soil. Moreover, 
as the exportation of corn under these circumstances is attended with 
no direct injury to population, so the benefits which indirectly arise 
to population from foreign commerce belong to this, in common with- 
other species of trade ; together with the peculiar advantage of pre^ 
scnting a constant incitement to the skill and industry of the husband 
man, iDy the promise of a certain sale and an adequate price, under 
every contingency of season and produce. There is another situation, 
in which corn may not only be exported, but in which the people can 
thrive by no other means; that is, of a newly-settled country with a fer- 
tile soil. The exportation of a large proportion of the corn which a 
country produces, proves, it is true, that the inhabitants have not yet at- 
tained to the number which the country is capable of maintaining ; but 
it does not prove but that they maybe hastening to this limit with the 
utmost practicable celerity, which is the perfection to be sought for in a 
young establishment. In all cases except these two, and in the former 
of them to a greater degree than what is necessary to take ofFoccasional 
redundancies, the exportation of corn is either itself noxious to popula- 
tion, or argues a defect of population, arising from some other cause. 
6. Abridgment of labor. — It has long been made a question, 
whether those mechanical contrivances which abridge lahor^ by per- 
forming the same work by fewer hands, be detrimental or not to the 
population of a country. From what has been delivered in pre- 
ceding parts of the present chapter, it w^ill be evident that this ques- 
tion is equivalent to another, whether such contrivances diminish or 
not the quantity of employment ? Their first and most obvious effect 
undoubtedly is this : because, if one man be made to do what three 
men did before, two are immediately discharged : but if, by some more 
general and remoter consequence, they increase the demand for work, 
or, what is the same thing, prevent the diminution of that demand, 
in a greater proportion than they contract the number of hands by 
which it is performed, the quantity of employment, upon the w^hole, 
will gain an addition. Upon which principle it maybe observed, first, 
that whenever a mechanical invention succeeds in one place, it is ne- 
cessary that it be imitated in every other where the same manufacture 
is carried on ; for it is manifest that he who has the benefit of a con- 
ciser operation will soon outvie and undersell a competitor who con- 
tinues to use a more circuitous labor. It is also true, in the second 
place, that whoever^/rs^ discover or adopt a mechanical improvement 
will, for some time, draw to themselves an increase of employment; 
and that this preference may continue even after the improvement has 
become general ; for, in every kind of trade, it is not only a great but 
permanent advantage, to have once pre-occupied the public reputation. 
Thirdly, after every superiority which might be derived from the pos- 
session of a secret has ceased, it may be well questioned w^hether even 
then any loss can accrue to employment. The same money will be 
spared to the same article still. Wherefore, in proportion as the arti- 
cle can be afforded at a lower price, by reason of an easier or shorter 

N2 



298 I'OPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 

process in the manufacture, it will either grow into more general use, 
or an improvement will take place in the quality and fabric, which 
will demand a proportionable addition of hands. The number of per- 
sons employed in the manufacture of stockings has not, I apprehend, 
decreased since the invention of stocking mills. The amount of what 
is expended upon the article, after subtracting from it the price of the 
raw material, and consequently what is paid for v/ork in this branch 
of our manufactories, is not less than it was before. Goods of a finer 
texture are worn in the place of coarser. This is the change which 
the invention has produced ; and which compensates to the manufac- 
tory for every other inconveniency. Add to which, that in the above, 
and in almost every instance, an improvement which conduces to the 
recommendation of a manufactory, either by the cheapness or the 
quahty of the goods, draws up after it many dependent employments, 
in w^hich no abbreviation has taken place. 



From the reasoning that has heen pursued, and the various consi- 
derations suggested in this chapter, a judgment may, in some sort, be 
formed, how far regulations of law are in their nature capable of con- 
tributing to the support and advancement of population. 1 say how 
^ar : for, as in many subjects, so especially in those which relate to 
commerce, to plenty, to riches, and to the number of people, more is 
wont to be expected from laws than laws can do. Laws can only 
imperfectly restrain that dissoluteness of manners which, by diminish- 
ing the frequency of marriages, impairs the very source of population. 
Laws cannot regulate the wants of mankind, their mode of living, or 
their desire of those superfluities which fashion, more irresistible than 
laws, has once introduced into general usage ; or, in other words, has 
erected into necessaries of life. Laws cannot induce men to enter into 
marriages, when the expenses of a family must deprive them of that 
system of accommodation to which they have habituated their expec- 
tations. Laws, by their protection, by assuring to the laborer the fruit 
and profit of his labor, may help to make a people industrious ] but, 
without industry, the laws cannot provide either subsistence or em- 
ployment : laws cannot make corn grow without toil and care, or trade 
flourish without art and diligence. In spite of all laws, the expert, 
laborious, honest workman will be employed, in preference to the lazy, 
the unskilful, the fraudulent, and evasive : and this is not more true of 
two inhabitants of the same village, than it is of the people of two 
different countries, which communicate either with each other, or with 
the rest of the world. The natural basis of trade is rivalship of 
quality and price ; or, which is the same thing, of skill and industry. 
Every attempt to force trade by operation of law, that is, by compel- 
ling persons to buy goods at one market which they can obtain 
cheaper and better from another, is sure to be either eluded by the 
quicksightedness and incessant activity of private interest, or to be 
frustrated by retaliation. One half of the commercial laws of maiiy 



POPULATION, PROVISION, ETC. 299 

Biates are calculated merely to counteract the restrictions which have 
been imposed by other states. Perhaps the only way in which the 
interposition of the law is salutary in trade is in the prevention of 
frauds. 

Next to the indispensable requisites of internal peace and security, 
the chief advantage which can be derived to population from the in- 
terference of law appears to me to consist in the encouragement of 
agriculture. This, at least, is the direct way of increasing the number 
of the people : every other mode being effectual only by its influence 
upon this. Now the principal expedient by which such a purpose 
can be promoted is to adjust the laws of property as nearly as possi- 
ble to the two following rules : first, " to give to the occupier all the 
power over the soil which is necessary for its perfect cultivation *" — 
secondly, " to assign the whole profit of every improvement to the per- 
sons by whose activity it is carried on." What we call property in 
land, as hath been observed above, is power over it. Now it is indif- 
ferent to the public in whose hands this power resides, if it be rightly 
used ] it matters not to whom the land belongs, if it be well cultivated. 
When we lament that great estates are often united in the same hand, 
or complain that one man possesses what would be sufficient for a 
thousand, we suffer ourselves to be misled by words. The owner of 
ten thousand pounds a year consumes little more of the produce of the 
soil than the owner of ten pounds a year. If the cultivation be equal, 
the estate, in the hands of one great lord, affords subsistence and em- 
ployment to the same number of persons as it would do if it were divi- 
ded among a hundred proprietors. In like manner we ought to judge 
of the effect upon the public interest, which may arise from lands being 
holden by the king or by the subject ] by private persons, or by cor- 
porations, by laymen, or ecclesiastics * in fee, or for life \ by virtue of 
office, or in right of inheritance. I do not mean that these varieties 
make no difference, but 1 mean that all the difference they do make re- 
spects the cultivation of the lands which are so holden. 

There exist in this country conditions of tenure which condemn the 
land itself to perpetual sterility. Of this kind is the right of common., 
which precludes each proprietor from the improvement, or even the 
convenient occupation, of his estate, without (what seldom can be ob- 
tained) the consent of many others. This tenure is also usually em- 
barrassed by the interference of manorial claims, under which it often 
happens that the surface belongs to one owner, and the soil to another; 
so that neither owner can stir a clod without the concurrence of his 
partner in the property. In many manors, the tenant is restrained 
from granting leases beyond a short term of years, which renders every 
plan of solid improvement impracticable. In these cases, the owner 
wants, what the first rule of rational policy requires, " sufficient power 
over the soil for its perfect cultivation." This power ought to be ex- 
pended to him by some easy and general law of enfranchisement, par- 
tition, and enclosure ; which, though compulsory upon the lord, or the 
rest of the tenants, while it has in view ihe melioration of the soil, and 
tenders an equitable compensation for every right that it takes away, 



^00 WAR, AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 

is neither more arbitrary, nor more dangerous to the stability of pro* 
perty, than that which is done in the construction of roads, bridges, 
embankments, navigable canals, and indeed in almost every public 
work, in which private owners of land are obliged to accept that price 
for their property which an indifferent jury may award. It may here, 
however, be proper to observe, that although the enclosure of wastes 
and pastures be generally beneficial to population, yet the enclosure 
of lands in tillage, in order to convert them into pastures, is as gene- 
rally hurtful. 

But, secondly, Agriculture is discouraged by every constitution of 
landed property which lets in those who have no concern in the im- 
provement to a participation of the profit. This objection is applica- 
ble to all such customs of manors as subject the proprietor, upon the 
death of the lord or tenant, or the alienation of the estate, to a fine ap- 
portioned to the improved value of the land. But of all institutions 
which are in this way adverse to cultivation and improvement, none 
is so noxious as that of tithes. A claimant here enters into the pro- 
duce, who contributed no assistance whatever to the production. 
When years, perhaps, of care and toil have matured an improvement ; 
when the husbandman sees new crops ripening to his skill and indus- 
try } the moment he is ready to put his sickle to the grain, he finds 
himself compelled to divide his harvest with a stranger. Tithes are 
a tax not only upon industry, but upon that industry which feeds 
mankind ] upon that species of exertion which it is the aim of all wise 
laws to cherish and promote ; and to uphold and excite which, com- 
poses, as we have seen, the main benefit that the community receives 
from the whole system of trade, and the success of commerce. And, 
together with the more general inconveniency that attends the exac- 
tion of tithes, there is this additional evil, in the mode at least accord- 
ing to which they are collected at present^ that they operate as a 
bounty upon pasturage. The burden of the tax falls with its chief, 
if not with its whole weight, upon tillage ; that is to say, upon that 
precise mode of cultivation which, as hath been shown above, it is the 
business of the state to relieve and remunerate, in preference to every 
other. No measure of such extensive concern appears to me so prac- 
ticable, nor any single alteration so beneficial, as the conversion of 
tithes into corn-rents. This commutation, I am convinced, might be 
so adjusted as to secure the tithe-holder a complete and perpetual 
equivalent for his interest, and to leave to industry its full operation, 
and entire reward 



CHAPTER XII. 

OF WAR AND OF MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 

Because the Christian Scriptures describe wars as what they are — 
as crimes or judgments, some have been led to believe that it is unlaw 



WAR, AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 30 J 

ful for a Christian to bear arms. But it should be remembered, that it 
ma)^ be necessary for individuals to unite their force, and for this end 
to resign themselves to the direction of a common will ; and yet it 
may be true that that will is often actuated by criminal motives, and 
often determined to destructive purposes. Hence, although the origin 
of wars be ascribed, in Scripture, to the operation of lawless and ma- 
lignant passions ;* and though war itself be enumerated among the 
sorest calamities with which a land can be visited, the profession of a 
soldier is nowhere forbidden or condemned. When the soldiers de- 
manded of John the Baptist what they should do, he said unto them, 
" Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely, and be content 
with your wages.'-f In which answer we do not find that, in order 
to prepare themselves for the reception of the kingdom of God, it was 
required of soldiers to relinquish their profession, but only that they 
should beware of the vices of which that profession was accused. 
The precept which follows, *-Be content with your wages," supposed 
them to continue in their situation. It was of a Roman centurion that 
Christ pronounced that memorable eulogy, " I have not found so great 
faith, no. not in Israel/'J The first Gentile convert§ who was received 
into the Christian church, and to whom the Gospel was imparted by 
the immediate and especial direction of Heaven, held the same station ; 
and in the history of this transaction we discover not the smallest in- 
timation that Cornelius, upon becoming a Christian, quitted the service 
of the Roman religion ', that his profession was objected to, or his 
continuance in it considered as in anywise inconsistent with his new 
character. 

In applying the principles of morality to the affairs of nations, the 
difficulty which meets us arises from hence, ''tiiat the particular con- 
sequence sometimes appears to exceed the value of the general rule." 
In this circumstance is founded the only distinction that exists be- 
tween the case of independent states and of independent individuals. 
In the transactions of private persons, no advantage that results from 
the breach of a general law of justice can compensate to the public 
for the violation of the law : in the concerns of empire, this may 
sometimes be doubted. Thus, that the faith of promises ought to be 
maintained, as far as is lawful, and as far as was intended by the par- 
ties, whatever inconveniency either of them may suffer by his fide- 
lity, in the intercourse of private life, is seldom disputed ; because it 
is evident to almost every man who reflects upon the subject, that the 
common happiness gains more by the preservation of the rule than it 
could do by removal of the inconveniency. But when the adherence 
to a public treaty would enslave a whole people ; would block up 
seas, rivers, or harbors ; depopulate cities; condemn fertile regions to 
eternal desolation ; cut off a country from its sources of provision, or 
deprive it of those commercial advantages to which its climate, pro- 
duce, or situation, naturally entitle it ; the magnitude of the particular 
evil induces us to call in question the obligation of the general rule. 

♦ Jamfes, iy. 1. f Luke, iii. 14. \ Luke, vii. 9. § Acts, x. 1. 



302 WAR, AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS 

Moral philosophy furnishes no precise solution to these doubts. She 
cannot pronounce that any rule of morality is so rigid as to bend to no 
exceptions ; nor, on the other hand, can she comprise these exceptions 
within any previous description. She confesses that the obligation of 
every law depends upon its ultimate utility: that this utility having 
a finite and determinate value, situations may be feigned, and conse- 
quently may possibly arise, in which the general tendency is out- 
weighed by the enormity of the particular mischief : but she recalls at 
' the same time to the consideration of the inquirer the almost inesti- 
mable importance, as of other general rules of relative justice, so es- 
pecially of national and personal fidelity ; the unseen, if not unbounded 
extent of the mischief, which must follow from the want of it • the 
danger of leaving it to the sufferer to decide upon the comparison of 
particular and general consequences ; and the still greater danger of 
such decisions being drawn into future precedents. If treaties, for in- 
stance, be no longer binding than while they are convenient, or until 
the inconveniency ascend to a certain point (which point must be fixed 
by the judgment, or rather by the feelings, of the complaining party;) 
or if such an opinion, after being authorized by a few examples, come 
at length to prevail ] one and almost the only method of averting or 
closing the calamities of war, of either preventing or putting a stop to 
the destruction of mankind, is lost to the world forever. We do not 
say that no evil can exceed this, nor any possible advantage compen- 
sate it ; but we say that a loss which affects all will scarcely be made 
up to the common stock of human happiness by any benefit that can 
be procured to a single nation, which, however respectable when com- 
pared with any other single nation, bears an inconsiderable proportion 
to the whole. These, however, are the principles upon which the cal- 
culation is to be formed. It is enough, in this place, to remark the 
cause which produces the hesitation that we sometimes feel, in apply- 
ing rules of personal probity to the conduct of nations. 

As between individuals it is found impossible to ascertain every 
duty by an immediate reference to public utility, not only because such 
reference is oftentimes too remote for the direction of private con- 
sciences, but because a multitude of cases arise in which it is indiffe- 
rent to the general interest by what rule men act, though it be abso- 
lutely necessary that they act by some constant and known rule or 
other ; and as, for these reasons, certain positive constitutions are wont 
to be established in every society, which, when established, become as 
obligatory as the original principles of natural justice themselves; so, 
likewise, it is between independent communities. Together with those 
maxims of universal equity which are common to states and to indi- 
viduals; and by which the rights and conduct of the one as well as the 
other ought to be adjusted, when they fall within the scope and appli- 
cation of such maxims ; there exist also among sovereigns a system of 
artificial jurisprudence, under the name of the law of nations. In this 
code are found the rules which determine the right to vacant or newly 
discovered countries ; those which relate to the protection of fugitives, 
the privileges of embassadors, the condition and duties of neutrality 



WAR, AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 303 

tne immunities of neutral ships, ports, and coasts, the distance from 
shore to which these immunities extend, the distinction between free 
and contraband goods, and a variety of subjects of the same kind. 
Concerning which examples, and indeed the principal part of what is 
called the jus gentium, it may be observed, that the rules derive their 
moral force (by which I mean the regard that ought to be paid to them 
by the consciences of sovereigns,) not from their internal reasonable- 
ness or justice, for many of them are perfectly arbitrary, nor yet from 
the authority by which they were established, for the greater part have 
grov/n insensibly into usage, without any public compact, formal ac- 
knowledgment, or even known original ; but simply from the fact of 
their being established, and the general duty of conforming to establish- 
ed rules upon questions, and between parties, where nothing but posi- 
tive regulations can prevent disputes, and where disputes are followed 
by such destructive consequences. The first of the instances which 
we have just now enumerated may be selected for the illustration of 
this remark. The nations of Europe consider the sovereignty of newly 
discovered countries as belonging to the prince or state whose subject 
makes the discovery ; and, in pursuance of this rule, it is usual for a 
navigator, who falls upon an unknown shore to take possession of it 
in the name of his sovereign at home, by erecting his standard, or dis- 
playing his flag, upon a desert coast. Now nothing can be more fan- 
ciful, or less substantiated by any considerations of reason or justice, 
than the right w^hich such discovery, or the transient occupation and 
idle ceremony that accompany it, confer upon the country of the dis- 
coverer. Nor can any stipulation be produced, by which the rest of 
the world have bound themselves to submit to this pretension. Yet 
when we reflect that the claims to newly discovered countries can 
hardly be settled between the different nations which frequent them, 
without some positive rule or other • that such claims, if left unsettled, 
would prove sources of ruinous and fatal contentions ; that the rule 
already proposed, however arbitrary, possesses one principal quality 
of a rule, determination and certainty ; above all, that it is acquiesced 
in, and that no one has power to substitute another, however he 
might contrive a better, in its place : when we reflect upon these pro- 
perties of the rule, or rather upon these consequences of rejecting its 
authority, we are led to kscribe to it the virtue and obligation of a 
precept of natural justice, because w^e perceive in it that which is the 
foundation of justice itself— public importance and utility. And a 
prince who should dispute this rule, for the want of regularity in its 
formation, or of intelligible justice in its principle, and by such disputes 
should disturb the tranquillity of nations, and at the same time lay the 
foundation of future disturbances, would be little less criminal than 
he who breaks the public peace by a violation of engagements to 
which he had himself consented, or by an attack upon those national 
rights which are founded immediately in the law of nature, and in the 
first perceptions of equity. The same thing may be repeated of the 
rules which the law of nations prescribes in the other instances that 
were mentioned, namely, that the obscurity of their origin, or the ar- 



304 WAR. AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 

bitrariness of their principle, subtract nothing from the respect that 
is due to them when once established. 



War may be considered with a view to its causes and its conduct. 

The justifying causes of war are deliberate invasions of right, and 
the necessity of maintaining such a balance of power among neighbor- 
ing nations, as that no single state, or confederacy of states, be strong 
enough to overwhelm the rest. The objects of just war are, precau- 
tion, defence, or reparation. In a larger sense, every just war is a 
defensive war, inasmuch as every just war supposes an injury perpe- 
trated, attempted, or feared. 

The insufficAent causes or unjustifiable motives of war, are the family 
alliances, the personal friendships, or the personal quarrels of princes* 
the internal disputes which are carried on in other nations • the justice 
of other wars; the extension of territory or of trade : the misfortunes 
or accidental weakness of a neighbormg or rival nation. 

There are two lessons of rational and sober policy, which, if it were 
possible to inculcate them into the councils of princes, would exclude 
many of the motives of war, and allay that restless ambition which is 
constantly stirring up one part of mankind against another. The first 
of these lessons admonishes princes to " place their glory and their 
emulation, not in the extent of territory, but in raising the greatest 
quantity of happiness out of a given territory." The enlargement of 
territory by conquest is not only not a just object of war, but, in the 
greater part of the instances in which it is attempted, not even desira- 
ble. It is certainly not desirable where it adds nothing to the numbers, 
the enjoyments, or the security of the conquerors. What commonly 
is gained to a nation by the annexing of new dependencies, or the sub- 
jugation of other countries to its dominion, but a wider frontier to de- 
fend ; more interfering claims to vindicate ; more quarrels, more 
enemies, more rebellions to encounter ; a greater force to keep up by 
sea and land : more services to provide for, and more establishments 
to pay ? And, in order to draw from these acquisitions something that 
may make up for the charge of keeping them, a revenue is to be ex- 
torted, or a monopoly to be enforced and watched, at an expense which 
costs half their produce. Thus the provinces are oppressed, in order 
to pay for being ill-governed; and the original state is exhausted in 
maintaining a feeble authority over discontented subjects. No assign- 
able portion of country is benefited by the change : and if the sovereign 
appear to himself to be enriched or strengthened, when every part of 
his dominion is made poorer and weaker than it w^as, it is probable 
that he is deceived by appearances. Or were it true that the grandeur 
of the prince is magnified by those exploits : the glory which is pur- 
chased, and the ambition which is gratified, by the distress of one 
country without adding to the happiness of another, which at the same 
time enslaves the new and impoverishes that ancient part of the em- 
pire, by whatever names it may be known or flattered, ought to be an 
object of universal execration ; and oftentimes not more so to the van- 



WAR, AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 305 

quished than to the very people whose armies or whose treasures have 
achieved the victory. 

There are, indeed, two cases in which the extension of territory may 
he of real advantage, and to both parties. The first is, where an em- 
pire thereby reaches to the natural boundaries which divide it from 
the rest of the world. Thus we account the British Channel the natu- 
ral boundary which separates the nations of England and France ; and 
if France pos.sessed any countries on this, or England any cities ox 
provinces on that side of the sea, recovery of such towns and district? 
to what may be called their natural sovereign, though it may not be 
a just reason for commencing war, would be a proper use to make of 
victory. The other case is, where neighboring states, being severally 
too small and weak to defend themselves against the dangers that sur- 
round them, can only be safe by a strict and constant junction of their 
strength : here conquest will effect the purposes of confederation and 
aUiance • and the union which it produces is often more close and per- 
manent than that which results from voluntary association. Thus, if 
the heptarchy had continued in England, the different kingdoms of it 
might have separately fallen a prey to foreign invasion : and although 
the interest and danger of one part of the island were in truth common 
to every other part, it might have been difficult to have circulated this 
persuasion among independent nations ; or to have united them in any 
regular or steady opposition to their continental enemies, had not the 
valor and fortune of an enterprising prince incorporated the whole into 
a single m.onarchy. Here the conquered gained as much by the revo- 
lution as the conquerors. In like manner, and for the same reason, 
when the two royal families of Spain were met together in one race 
of princes, and the several provinces of France had devolved into the 
possession of a single sovereign, it became unsafe for the inhabitants 
of Great Britain any longer to remain under separate governments. 
The union of England and Scotland, which transformed two quarrel- 
some neighbors into one powerful empire, and which was first brought 
about by the course of succession, and afterwards completed by amica- 
ble convention, would have been a fortunate conclusion of hostilities, 
had it been effected by the operations of war. These two cases being 
admitted, namely, the obtaining of natural boundaries and barriers, and 
the including under the same government those who have a common 
danger and a common enemy to guard against ; 1 know not whether 
a third can be thought of. in which the extension of empire by con- 
quest is useful even to the conquerors. 

The second rule of prudence which ought to be recommended to 
those who conduct the affairs of nations is " never to pursue national 
honor as distinct from national interest.''' This rule acknowledges that 
it is often necessary to assert the honor of a nation for the sake of its 
interest. The spirit and courage of a people are supported by flatter- 
ing their pride. Concessions which betray too much of fear or weak- 
B.esS; though they relate to points of mere ceremony, invite demands 
axid attacks of more serious importance. Our rule allows all this ] 
and o'l'v directs that, when points of honor become subjects of con- 



306 WAR, AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 

tention between sovereigns, or are likely to be made the occasions of 
war, they be estimated with a reference to utility, and not by themselves. 
" The dignity of his crown, the honor of his flag, the glory of his 
arms," in the mouth of a prince, are stately and imposing terms ; but 
the ideas they inspire are insatiable. It may be always glorious to 
conquer, whatever be the justice of the war, or the price of the victory. 
The dignity of a sovereign may not permit him to recede from claims 
of homage and respect, at whatever expense of national peace and 
happiness they are to be maintained i however unjust they may have 
been in their original, or in their continuance however useless to the 
possessor, or mortifying and vexatious to other states. The pursuit 
of honor, when set loose from the admonitions of prudence, becomes 
in kings a wild and romantic passion : eager to engage, and gathering 
fury in its progress, it is checked by no difficulties, repelled by no dan- 
gers ; it forgets or despises those considerations of safety, ease, wealth, 
and plenty which, in the eye of true public wisdom, compose the ob- 
jects, to w^iich the renown of arms, the fame of victory, are only in- 
strumental and subordinate. The pursuit of interest, on the other 
hand, is a sober principle ; computes costs and consequences ] is cau- 
tious of entering into war; stops in time : when regulated by those 
universal maxims of relative justice which belong to the affairs of 
communities as well as of private persons, it is the right principle for 
nations to proceed by; even when it trespasses upon these regulations, 
it is much less dangerous, because much more temperate than the other. 

2. The conduct of war. — If the cause and end of war be justifiable, 
all the means that appear necessary to the end are justifiable also. 
This is the principle which defends those extremities to which the 
violence of war usually proceeds; for since war is a contest hy force 
between parties who acknow^ledge no common superior, and since it 
includes not in its idea the supposition of any convention which should 
place limits to the operation of force, it has naturally no boundary but 
that in which force terminates — the destruction of the life against 
which the force is directed. Let it be observed, however, that the 
license of war authorizes no acts of hostility but what are necessary 
or conducive to the end and object of the war. Gratuitous barbarities 
borrow no excuse from this plea : of which kind is every cruelty and 
every insult that serves only to exasperate the sufferings or to incense 
the hatred of an enemy, without weakening his strength, or in any 
manner tending to procure his submission, such as the slaughter of 
captives, the subjecting of them to indignities or torture, the violation 
of women, the profanation of temples, the demolition of public build- 
ings, libraries, statues, and, in general, the destruction or defacing of 
works that conduce nothing to annoyance or defence. These enormi- 
ties are prohibited not only by the practice of civilized nations, but by 
the law of nature itself ; as having no proper tendency to accelerate 
the termination, or accomplish the object, of the war ; and as contain- 
ing that which in peace and war is equally unjustifiable — ultimate 
and gratuitous mischief. 

There are other restrictions imposed upon the conduct of war, not 



WAR, AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 307 

by the law of nature primarily, but by the laws of war first, and by 
the law of nature as seconding and ratifying the laws of war. The 
laws of war are part of the law of nations; and founded, as to their 
authority, upon the same principle with the rest of that code, namely, 
upon the fact of their being established, no matter when or by whom ; 
upon the expectation of their being mutually observed, in consequence 
of that establishment ; and upon the general utility which results from 
such observance. The binding force of these rules is the greater, be- 
cause the regard that is paid to them must be universal or none. 

The breach of the rule can only be punished by the subversion of 
the rule itself; on which account, the whole mischief that ensues from 
the loss of those salutary restrictions which such rules prescribe is 
justly chargeable upon the first aggressor. To this consideration may 
be referred the duty of refraining in war from poison and from assas- 
sination. If the law of nature simply be consulted, it may be difficult 
to distinguish between these and other methods of destruction which 
are practiced without scruple, by nations at war. If it be lawful to 
kill an enemy at all, it seems lawful to do so by one mode of death as 
well as by another; by a dose of poison, as by the point of a sword 3 
by the hand of an assassin, as by the attack of an army : for if it be 
said that one species of assault leaves to an enemy the power of de- 
fending himself against it, and that the other does not ] it may be an- 
swered, that we possess at least the same right to cut off an enemy's 
defence that we have to seek his destruction. In this manner might 
the question be debated, if there existed no rule or law of war upon 
the subject. But when we observe that such practices are at present 
excluded by the usage and opinions of civilized nations ; that the first 
recourse to them would be followed by instant retaliation ; that the 
mutual license which such attempts must introduce would fill both 
sides with the misery of continual dread and suspicion, without adding 
to the strength or success of either ; that when the example came to 
be more generally imitated, which it soon would be, after the sentiment 
that condemns it had been once broken in upon, it would greatly ag- 
gravate the horrors and calamities of war, yet procure no superiority 
to any of the nations engaged in it ] when we view these effects, we 
join in the public reprobation of such fatal expedients, as of the admis- 
sion among mankind of new and enormous evils without necessity or 
advantage. The law of nature, we see at length, forbids these inno- 
vations, as so many transgressions of a beneficial general rule actu 
ally subsisting. 

The license of war, then, acknowledges tivo limitations: it autho- 
rizes no hostilities which have not an apparent tendency to effectuate 
the object of the war ; it respects those positive laws which the cus- 
tom of nations hath sanctified, and which, while they are mutually 
conformed to, mitigate the calamities of war, without weakening its 
operations, or diminishing the power or safety of belligerent states 



Long and various experience seems to have convinced the nations 



308 WAR, AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 

of Europe, that nothing hut a standing army can oppose a standing 
army, where the numbers on each side bear any moderate proportion 
to one another. The first standing army that appeared in Europe after 
the fall of the Roman legion was that which was erected in France by 
Charles VII. about the middle of the fifteenth century : and that the 
institution hath since become general, can only be attributed to the 
superiority and success which are everywhere observed to attend it. 
The truth is, the closeness, regularity, and quickness of their move- 
ments; the unreserved; instantaneous, and almost mechanical obedi- 
ence to orders ; the sense of personal honor, and the familiarity with 
danger, w^hich belong to a disciphned veteran, and embodied soldiery, 
give such firmness and intrepidity to their approach, such weight and 
execution to their attack, as are not to be withstood by loose ranks of 
occasional and newly- levied troops, who are liable, by their inexperi- 
ence, to disorder and confusion, and in whom fear is constantly aug- 
mented by novelty and surprise. It is possible that a militia, with a 
great excess of numbers, and a ready supply of recruits, may sustain 
a defensive or a flying war against regular troops ; it is also true that 
any service which keeps soldiers for a while together, and inures them 
by little and little to the habits of war and the danger of action, trans- 
forms them in effect into a standing army. But upon this plan it may 
be necessary for almost a whole nation to go out to war to repel an 
invader ; besides that a people so unprepared must always have the 
seat, and with it the miseries of war, at home, being utterly incapable 
of carrying their operations into foreign countries. 

From the acknowledged superiority of standing armies, it follows, 
not only that it is unsafe for a nation to disband its regular troops, 
while neighboring kingdoms retain theirs, but also that regular troops 
provide for the public service at the least possible expense. I sup- 
pose a certain quantity of military strength to be necessary, and I say, 
.hat a standhig army costs the community less than any other esta- 
blishment which presents to an enemy the same force. The constant 
drudgery of low employments is not only incompatible with any great 
degree of perfection or expertness in the profession of a soldier, but 
the profession of a soldier almost always unfits men for the business 
of regular occupations. Of three inhabitants of a village, it is better 
that one should addict himself entirely to arms, and the other two stay 
constantly at home to cultivate the ground, than that all the three 
should mix the avocations of a camp w^ith the business of husbandry. 
By the former arrangement, the country gains one complete soldier and 
two industrious husbandmen ; from the latter it receives three raw 
militiamen, who are at the same time three idle and profligate peasants. 
It should be considered, also, that the emergencies of war wait not for 
seasons. Where there is no standing army ready for immediate ser- 
vice, it may be necessary to caJl the reaper from the fields in harvest, 
or the ploughman in seed time ] and the provision of a whole year 
may perish by the interruption of one month's labor. A standing 
army, therefore, is not only a more effectual, but a cheaper method of 
provTiing for the public safety than any other, because it adds more 



WAR, AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS 309 

than any other to the common strength, and takes less from that which 
composes the wealth of a nation — its stock of productive industry. 

There is yet another distinction between standing armies and mili- 
tias, which deserves a more attentive consideration than any that has 
been mentioned. When the state relies, for its defencCjupon a militia, 
it is necessary that arms be put into the hands of the people at large. 
The militia itself must be numerous, in proportion to the want or in- 
feriority of its discipline, and the imbecilities or defects of its consti- 
tution. Moreover, as such a militia must be supplied by rotation, 
allotment or some mode of succession, whereby they who have served 
a certain time are replaced by fresh draughts from the country, a much 
greater number will be instructed in the use of arms, and will have 
been occasionally embodied together, than are actually employed, or 
than are supposed to be wanted at the same time. Now what effects, 
upon the civil condition of the country, may be looked for from this 
general diffusion of the military character, becomes an inquiry of great 
importance and delicacy. To me it appears doubtful whether any 
government can be long secure where the people are acquainted with 
the use of arms and accustomed to resort to them. Every faction will 
find itself at the head of an army ; every disgust will excite commo- 
tion, and every commotion become a civil war. Nothing, perhaps, 
can govern a nation of armed citizens but that w^hich governs an 
army — despotism. I do not mean that a regular government would 
become despotic by training up its subjects to the knowledge and ex- 
erci:=3 of arms, but that it would ere long be forced to give way to 
despotism in some other shape ] and that the country would be liable 
to what is even worse than a settled and constitutional despotism — to 
perpetual rebellions, and to perpetual revolutions ; to short and violent 
usurpations ] to the successive tyranny of governors, rendered cruel 
and jealous by the danger and instability of their situation. 

The same purposes of strength and efficacy which make a standing 
army necessary at all, make it necessary, in mixed governments, that 
this arm/ be submitted to the management and direction of the prince; 
for, however well a popular council may be qualified for the offices of 
legislation, it is altogether unfit for the conduct of war ; in which suc- 
cess usually depends upon vigor and enterprise : upon secrecy, dis- 
patch, and unanimity ; upon a quick perception of opportunities, and 
the power of seizing every opportunity immediately. It is likewise 
necessary that the obedience of an army be as prompt and active as 
possible ] for which reason it ought to be made an obedience of will 
and emulation. Upon this consideration is founded the expediency 
of leaving to the prince not only the government and destination of 
the army, but the appointment and promotion of its officers * because 
a design is then alone likely to be executed with zeal and fidelity, 
when the person who issues the order chooses the instruments and 
rewards the service. To which we may subjoin, that in governments 
like ours, if the direction and officering of the army were placed in the 
hands of the democratic part oit' the constitution, this power, added to 
what they already possess, would so overbalance all that would be 



31€ WAR, AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 

left of regal prerogative, that little would remain of monarchy m the 
constitution but the name and expense : nor would these probably 
remain long. 

While we describe, however, the advantages of standing armies, 
we must not conceal the danger. These properties of their constitu- 
tion — the soldiery being separated in a great degree from the rest of 
the community, their being closely linked among themselves by habits 
of society and subordination, and the dependency of the whole chain 
upon the will and favor of the prince — however essential they may 
be to the purposes for which armies are kept up, give them an aspect 
in no wise favorable to public liberty. The danger, however, is dimi- 
nished by maintaining, on all occasions, as much alliance of interest, 
and as much intercourse of sentiment between the military part of 
the nation and the other orders of the people, as are consistent with 
the union and discipline of an army. For which purpose, officers of 
the army, upon whose disposition towards the commonwealth a great 
deal may depend, should be taken from the principal families of the 
country, and at the same time also be encouraged to establish in it 
families of their own, as well as be admitted to seats in the senate, 
to hereditary distinctions, and to all the civil honors and privileges 
that are compatible with their profession : which circumstances of 
connexion and situation will give them such a share in the general 
rights of the people, and so engage their inclinations on the side of 
public liberty, as to afford a reasonable security that they cannot be 
brought, by any promises of personal aggrandizement, to assist in ihe 
execution of measures which might enslave their posterity, their kin- 
dred, and their country. 



QUESTIONS 



ADAPTED TO 



PALEFS MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. 



BOOK I. 

CHAPTER I. 

DEFINITION AND USE OF THE SCIENCE. 



What is Moral Philosopliy ? 
What other names designate the 
game science 1 



Of what use is the study of this 
science ? 
What are these rules ? 



CHAPTER II. 

THE LAW OF HONOR. 



What is the law of honor .'' 

What is adverted to by the law 
of honor ? 

What duties does this law regu- 
late ? 

What does it omit ? 

What vices does this law a<"rount 
no breaches of honor ? 



Why does it so regard these 
vices ? 

To what is this law, in most in- 
stances, favorable? 

By whom, and for what purpose, 
is the law of honor constituted ? 

What vices does it allow ? 

Does it lay any stress on the op- 
posite virtues : 



CHAPTER III. 



THE LAV7 OF THE LAND. 



What do persons beneath the 
law of honor often make their rule 
of life.? 

What is understood by their 
miking this rule of life .'' 

How many defects has every 
system of human laws as a rule of 
life ? 

What is the first ? 

When only does the law speak 
and command ? 



What is the consequence .' 
What is the second defect ? 
What crimes cannot be defined 
by previous description ? 
What is the alternative ^ 

Why may it not be left to the 
discretion of the maoristrate ? 



When 
selves ? 



are men left to them- 



312 



QUESTIONS. 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE SCRIPTURES. 



Who looks for more in the Scrip- 
tures than he will find .'' 

Why was not every particular 
duty detailed in the Scriptures .'' 

How is morality taught in the 
Scriptures 1 

How are these rules illustrated ? 

Give an example of each method. 

How are all practical sciences 
taught ? 



Why are such examples given? 

What farther is said of the Scrip- 
ture method of teaching morality ? 

YVhat do the Scriptures presup- 
pose ? 

For what are they employed ? 

Give an example. 

What is intended by these con- 
siderations ? 



CHAPTER V. 



THE MORAL. SENSE. 



Relate the story of Caius Tora- 
nius. 

What question is asked respect- 
ing this story ? 

What persons will answer the 
question in the affirmative .'' 

Who will answer it in the nega- 
tive .'' 

Why must we judge of the event 
from probable reasons ? 

What do they who contend for 
the affirmative observe ? 

By whom have answers been 
given to most of these arguments .'' 

What fact do they controvert ? 

What do they remark from au- 
thentic accounts ? 

What is said of the duty of chil- 
dren ? 

What is said of suicide .-* 

Of theft } 

Of duelling ^ 

Of the forgiveness of injuries 1 
&c. 

What is moral approbation said 
to follow ? 

How have these fashions and in- 
stitutions arisen ? 

What do you say of the general 
approbation of virtue .•' 

How do they account for it with- 
out a moral sense .-' 



What do they say of the love of 
money ? 

When the custom of approving 
certain actions is commenced, how 
is it continued ? 

What is said of imitation ? 

What is another objection to 
moral instincts ^ 

What is said of veracity } 

What other argument has been 
proposed ? 

What is said of this argument 1 

V/hat is the conclusion to which 
the author arrives ? 

What does he say is not a safe 
way of arguing ? 

What maxim of Aristotle is men- 
tioned ? 

By what are maxims formed ? 

Vv'hat is said of the laws of cus- 
tom ? 

What objection to a system of 
morality founded on instincts .'' 

Admit these instincts, and what 
question arises ? 

How answered .'' 

What coilclusive reply may be 
made ^ 

Why may not these instincts be 
indications of the will of God ? 

What farther is said of this ce- 
lebrated question ? 



QUESTIONS. 



81S 



CHAPTER VI. 



HUMAN HAPPINESS. 



TV hat is said of the word " hap- 
py ?- 

Give the example. 

In strictness, what condition 
may be denominated happy ? 

What is meant by happiness ? 

What is omitted in this inquiry ? 

In what do pleasures differ ? 

What two things does the au- 
thor propose to show ? 
1. In what does happiness not con- 
sist ? 

Meaning of pleasures of sense ? 

First reason why happiness does 
not consist in these ? Illustrate. 

Second ^ Give the illustration 
or proof. 

Third ? Illustration. 

By what delusion are men suf- 
ferers in their happiness .•' 

What is farther said of this ex- 
pectation ? 

What effect on us has the humor 
of being prodigiously delighted ? 

What does the author say cor- 
responds with this account ? 

What is remarked of such men .'' 

Why are these pleasures neces- 
sarily of short duration ? 

Why may not this imperfection 
96 compensated by repetition ? 

What has been omitted in this ac- 
count ? 

What pleasure is purchased too 
dear .'' 

Who are always too eager, and 
who sometimes too remiss in their 
pursuit ? 

2. In what does happiness not 
consist ? And why ? 

Whose expectations are seldom 
answered ? 

What is said of imagining dis- 
tresses ? 

What is to many a refreshment ^ 

Why? 

What is to be accounted for only 
on this principle ? 

3. In what does happiness not 
consist ? 



If superiority afforded pleasure 
what would follow ? 

What superiority does yield sat- 
isfaction ? 

What is said of the shepherd, 
the farmer, and the lord ? 

In what case will they feel sat- 
isfaction in their superiority ? 

What conclusion follows ? 

Illustrate. 

At what does philosophy smile .'' 

What is the position, and how 
made out ? 

Concerning what question may 
we doubt .' 

What considerations render this 
question doubtful ^ 

What is next to be considered ? 

In the conduct of life, what is it 
important to know .' 

Why is this knowledge scarce 
and dif&cult ? 

Why does the author say " to 
know beforehand ?" 

Why will no plan of happiness 
succeed to all ? 

In favor of what conditions of 
life is there a presumption } Why : 

1. With this for a guide, in what 
does happiness consist .' 

What persons commonly possess 
good spirits } 

What pleasure is favorable to 
happiness ? 

2. What is another article of 
happiness } 

What is said of present gratifi- 
cations ^ 

Whence is this conclusion ? 

AVhat is said of this vacuity of 
mind } 

Of what two kinds is hope ? 

Explain them. 

Which only is valuable, and 
why ? 

What difficulty occurs here } 

What two things are requisite ? 

What pleasures are most valua- 
ble .=» 



O 



314 



QUESTIONS. 



What man has an advantage 
over all others ? Why ? 

What farther is said of such a 
man, and of his ends ? 

What is said of engagement ? 

Mention particular instances. 

When are we happy ? 

When miserable ? 

3. On what does happiness de- 
pend ? 

In what art is the secret of hu- 
man happiness ? 

What is said of habit ? 

With what habits is the advan- 
tage ? 

What is said of the epicure and 
the peasant ? 

of the card player and 
the laborer ? 

of the man accustom- 
ed to retirement, and the one ac- 
customed to the crowd ? 



AVhich has the advantage in a 

change of fortune? &c. 
How does solitude come to each ? 

How Avill you see the two ? 

What is said of a reader inured 
to books of science ? 

of one inured to 
works of humor ? 

of fortune as conda 
cive to happiness ? 

Give the example. 
4. In what does happiness consist ? 

What do you understand by 
health ? 

In this sense what is health ? 

To what will a man submit for 
its sake .'' 

What is said of the enjoyment of 
health ? 

Of what does it probably consti- 
tute the happiness .'' 

What two conclusions will the 
account justify ? 



CHAPTER VII. 



VIRTUE. 



What is virtue ^ 

What is the subject ? 
the rule ? 
the motive .' 

How has virtue been divided ? 

Define each by its acts. 

Give an example of each. 

How has virtue been distin- 
guished by others .'' 

To what are both directed .? 

What are the four cardinal vir- 
tues ^ 

What is the modern division of 
virtue ? 

What are duties to God .? 
to men .-* 
to ourselves } 
What observations are here 
stated ? 

1. What is the first .? 

When do men deliberate ? . 

What question is then asked } 

How answered ] 

What rule results ? 

Give an example. 
How will a man of good habits act .'' 

Give another instance. 

What may be explained from 
what has been said ? 

Repeat the definition of virtue . 

What is said of habitual virtue 1 



What is man said to be ? 

Mention some particular habits . 

2. What has the Christian reli- 
gion not ascertained .'' 

Ought this to be an objection to 
Christianity ? 

What should the objector show 1 

What seems most agreeable to 
our conceptions of justice 1 

What has been said of the eco- 
nomy of Providence .-' 

What answer might be given 1 

First general position of Scrip- 
ture morality 1 

What is the proof of this ? 

Second general position .'' 

First reason 1 

Second reason .' 

Third .? 

What is the Scripture language 
on this subject .'' 

What is said of texts which 
seem to lean a contrary way 1 

Third position ? 

By whom is this laid down, and 
where ^ 

Fourth position ? 

Give an instance. 

What is asserted concerning a 
doubtful action ? 

State the proof from St. Paul. 



QUESTIONS. 



815 



BOOK II. 



MORAL OBLIGATIONS. 
CHAPTER I. 

THE QTJESTIOjr, WHY AM I OBLIGED TO KEEP MY WORD, CONSIDERED 



Give the several answers to the 
question, "why am I obliged to 
keep my word ?" 

First thing observable of these 
answers 1 

What is the fitness of things ? 

nature of things ? 
reason ? 
truth ? 
What follows ? 
What is required by the will of . mquiry r 
God? 

CHAPTER II. 



What is right, or what does the 
word mean ? 

Why do moralists meet in their 
conclusions ? 

Second thing observable of these 
answers ? 

What questions may be proposed 
by the inquiry ? 

Proper method of conducting the 



WHAT WE MEAN WHEN WE SAY A MAN IS OBLIGED TO DO A THING. 

When is a man said to be j Give the example. 

obliged ? What is said of the words obli- 

What must the motive be ? | gation and obliged .' 

Give the example. What follows from this account 

From what must the motive re- of obligation ? 

suit ? Illustrate. 

CHAPTER III. 



THE QUESTION, " WHY AM I OBLIGED TO KEEP MY WORD," RESUMED. 



What is it to be obliged ? 

Why am I obliged to keep my 
word ? 

What is said of this solution ? 

What is the motive ? 

What the rule ? 

Whence arose the mystery which 
hung over this subject ? 
What is said of moral obligation ? 

What is obligation ? 

What is said of an act of pru- 
dence, and one of duty ? 



Illustrate each. 

What question arises ? Why ? 

What is the difference between 
an act of prudence and one of duty? 

What is said of a System of mora- 
lity independent of a future state ? 

There are to us what two great 
questions ? 

What does the first comprise ? 

What does the second ? 

What is said of both, and which 
is taken for granted ? 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE WILL OF GOD. 

What is the whole business of I What is the first method of com- 
morality ? I ing at the will of God ^ 



816 



QtTESTlOWS. 



What is the second method ? 
What absurdity is noticed ? 
Why is this absurd ? 
State the case of an ambassador. 
Of what did Mr. Hume complain ? 
What should they do who are 
disposed to join in the complaint ? 
What will be the result ? 



What inconsistency is mention- 
ed .? 

What is the method of coming at 
the will of God by the light of na- 
ture ? 

Upon what does this rule pro- 
ceed ? 

What is said of this presump- 
tion ? 



CHAPTER V. 



THE DIVINE BENEVOLENCE. 



When God created man, what 
did he wish ? 

Suppose he had wished our mis- 
ery ? 

Suppose he had been indifferent ? 
What supposition alone remains ? 

State the argument in different 
terms. 

What is said of the contrivances 
with which the world abounds ? 



Is evil the object of contrivance ? 

niustrate. 

What deserves attention ? 

What does the anatomist dis- 
cover ? 

What conclusion follows ? 

What most clearly shows the 
benevolence of the Deity ? 

What then does God will ? 

What is said of this conclusion ? 



CHAPTER VI. 



How are actions to be estimated ? 

What constitutes the obligation 
^f a moral rule ^ 

What is here said to be right ? 

What objection to all this ? 

Give an illustration. 

What questions are proposed ? 

What is the answer ? 

What is the true answer 1 

What are the two bad conse- 
quences ? 



What are the particular conse- 
quences ? 

What are the general conse- 
quences ? 

The particular bad consequence 
of assassination ? 

The general ? 

What is said of an action whose 
general consequence is evil ? 

What does this solution sup- 
pose ? 



CHAPTER VII. 



THE NECESSITY OF GENERAL RULES. 



What may be said of the same 
sort of actions ^ 

When the general permission is 
pernicious what must be done ? 

Give the example. 

What would be the consequence 
of such a state of affairs ? 

What are necessary to every 
government ? 



What is meant by moral gov- 
ernment ^ 

Why are such rules necessary ? 

What is included in the idea of 
reward and punishment ? 

Consequence ? 

What reflection is here antici- 
pated ? 

Give the example. 



QUESTIONS. 



317 



Does secrecy justify an action ? 
What do the Scriptures teach 
on this subject ? 



Why will secret actions be 
brought to light ? 

When brought to light what 
will they become ? 



CHAPTER VIII. 



THE CONSIDERATION OF GENERAL. CONSEQUENCES PURSUED. 



How may general consequences 
be estimated ? 

Suppose they were permitted, 
what question is asked ? 

What is the answer ? 

In what respects must an ac- 
tion be expedient in order to be 
right .'' 

By what method is this doctrine 
impressed on the mind ? 

State the particular, and the 
general consequence of counter- 
feiting money. 

Of forgery. 

Of stealing. 

Of breaking into a house. 

Of smuggling. 

Of an officer's breaking parole. 



What proves the superior im 
portance of general consequences r 

What caused the perplexity 
found in ancient moralists : 

Of what were they sensible on 
the one hand ? 

At what startled on the other ? 

How did they attempt to relieve 
the difficulty ? 

What account could they give 
of the matter ? 

What is meant by the maxim, 
" not to do evil that good may 
come?" 

What is farther said of this 
maxim .'' 

With what reflection is this sub- 
ject concluded ? 



CHAPTER IX. 



OF RIGHT. 



What is said of right and obli- Of what is right a quality ? 

gation .'* When is right a quality of per- 

Give the illustration sons ? 

What does right signify 1 and Of actions ? 

why ? By substitution, what may you 

What assertions are intelligible say ? 

and significant ? How may you vary the former 

State the case. set of expressions ? 

CHAPTER X. 



THE DIVISION OF RIGHTS. 



How are rights, when applied to 

persons, divided ? 

What are natural rights .-' 
What are adventitious rights .' 
Give examples of natural 

rights. 

Of adventitious rights. 

What question respecting ad- 

rentitious rights ? 



How is it answered ? 

Are adventitious rights less sa- 
cred than natural rights 1 

Why .=> 

Give an example. 

Second division ? 
Give examples of alienable 
right. 

Of unalienable. 



318 



QUESTIOXS. 



On what does this distinction 
depend 1 

What is said of right by con- 
tract ? 

Of the right to civil liberty ? 

Why are those held in detesta- 
tion who sold their liberty ? 

Third division ? 

What are perfect rights ? 

Imperfect ? 

Examples of perfect rights. 

Of imperfect. 

What difficulty is mentioned ? 

How resolved ? 

To what is the question redu- 
ced ? 

What is the answer ? 



What is said of the candidate ? 

Why may he not demand suc- 
cess by force ? 

When the right is imperfect, 
what is the obligation ? 

Example. 

What objection to the term 
" imperfect obligation ?" 

What does the obligation's being 
perfect or imperfect determine ? 

Example. 

What precepts commonly pro- 
duce imperfect obligations ? 

Perfect obligations ^ 

In which do religion and virtue 
find their principal exercise ? 

How are the others secured ? 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE GENERAL RIGHTS OF MANKIND. 



What are meant by the general 
rights of mankind ? 

What is the first general right ? 

Why is it presumed that God 
intended these for our use ? 

What is the second general 
right ? 

What is alleged in vindication 
of destroying the life of animals ? 

What is observed of these rea- 
sons ? 

To what are we indebted for 
permission to destroy animals ? 

What is the first scriptural 
Banction given for the practice ? 

What is said of wanton cruelty 
to animals ? 

What seems to have been the in- 
tention of the Creator ? 

Vfhat is said of the waste and 
misuse of these productions ? 

What instances are mentioned .? 



What reflection seems not to have 
entered the minds of men ? 

What other conclusion is deduc- 
ed from the intention of the Al- 
mighty ? 

What is the only argument to 
show that the produce of the earth 
ought not to be public property ^ 

In what case is this true ? 

What is said of the medicinal 
springs ^ 

Of fisheries .'' 

Of navigable waters .' 

What is the third general right ? 

What is meant by the right of 
necessity } 

What is the foundation of this 
right ? 

When is restitution due ; and 
why .^ 

To what amount is it due ? 



QUESTIONS. 



810 



BOOK III. 

RELATIVE DUTIES. 



PART I. 
OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH ARE DETERMINATE. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF PROPERTY. 

Recite tlie example illustrative of property. 
CHAPTER II. 

THE USE OF THE INSTITUTION OF PROPERTY. 



What is said of the institution 
of property ? 

What is the first advantage .'' 

In what case would none culti- 
vate the ground ? 

On what should we subsist if we 
trusted to spontaneous produc- 
tions ? 

Example. 

Where may people subsist with- 
out property in land ? 

What would happen in less fa- 
vored situations } 

Second advantage ? 



How may we judge of the effects 
of a common right in the produc- 
tions of the earth ? 

Third advantage ? 

Illustrate. 

Fourth advantage .'' 

First way in which it does this ? 

Second way ? 

Upon these several accounts, 
what may we pronounce .'' 

What is said of the balance ? 

What is said of the inequality 
of property ? 



CHAPTER III. 



THE HISTORY OF PROPERTY. 



What were the first objects of 
property ? 

What were the next, and after- 
wards ? 

What soon became of proper- 
ty? 

Why were wills much valued in 
the East J 



What was the first partition of 
an estate .' 

What is farther said of property 
in land ? 

What is said of property in im- 
movables I 

How was it with property in 
land.^ ^ ^ ^ 



CHAPTER IV. 



IN WHAT THE RIGHT OF PROPERTY IS FOUNDED. 

What is said of the different ac- 
counts of moralists ? 

What is the first account given r 



What dif&culty is mentioned 

Why? 

What is the question ? 



320 



QUESTIONS. 



What is the objection to it ? 

Another account given by Mr 
Locke ? 

What is said of it ? 

Where will it not hold 1 

What is another and better ac- 
count ? 

To what extent does this rea- 
son justify property ? 

Explain. 

What is said of these accounts ? 

What is the real foundation of 
our right ? 

What is the intention of God ? 

How is it fulfilled .' 



What, then, is consistent witi 

his will ? 

Show how a man may possesi 
the share assigned him. 

On what does the right to an es- 
tate not depend ? 

Give an instance. 

Does it depend on expediency i 

Why not ? 

To what conclusion do these 
principles seem to tend ? 

Example. 

What distinction in such cases 

Apply this distinction to the 
examples proposed. 



CHAPTER V. 



PROMISES. 



State the three propositions. 

1. Whence arises the obligation 
to perform promises ? 

' From what do men act ? 

How is expectation determined .' 

Why is confidence in promises 
essential to human intercourse .' 

What may some imagine ? 

What is said of this ? 

Example. 

2. In what sense are promises 
to be interpreted ? 

Why not in the sense the pro- 
miser intended ? 

The promisee received ? 
Why is the rule put in the 
above form ? 

Give an example. 

What is evident from the ac- 
count given .'* 

Consequence } 

State the cases mentioned* 

What are tacit promises ? 

What is said of a present inten- 
tion ? 

An engagement to abide by it .'' 

What is said of declarations of 
present intention ? 

Examples. 

Is a wanton change of a dis- 
closed intention right ^ 

Why? 

By what are men frequently 
distressed ? 



3. First case in which promises 
are not binding ^ 

What must be observed here ? 

Why ? 

Give instances. 

What if the promiser occasions 
the impossibility .'' 

Second case in which promises 
are not binding ? 

Examples of the first kind. 

Why are the parties not obliged 
to perform what the promise re- 
quires ? 

Examples of the second kind. 

Why does the obligation cease ? 

What is said of Herod's promise 
to his daughter-in-law .-' 

To what does this rule extend ? 

Example. 

AVhat caution is recommended ^ 

Why? 

Suppose two obligations are 
contradictory ? 

What destroys the validity of 
the promise ? 

Why ? 

Examples. 

What is said of promises pro- 
ceeding from an unlawful motive ? 

Example. 

Why was the Bishop's decision 
wrong ? 

What promise cannot be deem 
ed unlawful ? 



QUESTIONS. 



821 



What is said of this case ? 

Give an example. 

Why ought not promises of se- 
crecy to be violated ? 

Third case in which promises 
are not binding ? 

Why? 

Fourth case ? 

Why ? 

Suppose a third person convey 
my declaration to the promisee 
without my authority ? 

Why not binding ? 

Fifth case in which promises 
are not binding ? 

What is sometimes doubtful ? 

Explain by the two examples. 

In what case is a promiser not 
released ^ 

Sixth case in which promises 
are not binding .? 

First instance ? 

Why is not such a promise 
binding } 



Examples. 

Second instance .' 

Example. 

Show why the father is released 

Foundation of the rule ? 

Give an example in which an 
error does not annul the obliga- 
tion. 

Recite what is said of the diffi- 
culty in the case of erroneous 
promises. 

What has been controverted ? 

On what does the question de- 
pend ? 

Example. 

The good consequence .■' 

The bad consequence .'' 

Give the plainer cases. 

Why are these binding ? 

What are vows, and what is 
said of their obligation and vio- 
lation ? 

The scriptural account of vows ? 

Case of Jephtha 1 



CHAPTER VI. 



CONTRACTS. 



What is a contract ? 
The obligation? &c. 
Rule of construction ? 



What are the several kinds of 
contracts ? 



CHAPTER VII. 



CONTRACTS OF SALE. 



What is the rule of justice 1 

How is this proved ? 

What adds to the value of this 
honesty ? 

What exception to this rule .' 

What is said of passing bad mo- 
ney, and the excuse ? 

What is said of price ? 

In what case is a tradesman dis- 
honest ? 

Why should this seem to be 
doubtful ? 

Show why it is wrong. 



What constitutes the fraud ? 

AYhat if you disdain any such 
engagement ? 

Example. 

What question is here asked ? 

On what will this depend ? 

Illustrate by the two examples. 

How are many such questions 
determined ? 

Why .? 

Example. 

What regulates mercantile con- 
cerns ^ 



CHAPTER VIII. 



CONTRACTS OF HAZARD. 

What are meant by contracts of 1 What is neither practicable 
hazard ^ i nor true ? 

02 



822 



QUESTIONS. 



Why is this not practicable ? 

Example. 
^ Why is not equality requisite to 
justice .? 

Proper restriction ? 

State the honest and the dishon- 
est advantage, and the reasons. 



In what contracts does the same 
distinction hold ? 

Give an example. 

Example of speculations in 
trade or in stocks. 

In insurances,what is necessary 
to justice ? 



CHAPTER IX. 



CONTRACTS OF LENDING OF INCONSUMABLE PROPERTY. 



What is inconsumable proper- 
ty? 

First question ? 

Answer ? 

Example 1 

When must the borrower make 
good the damage ? 

Example 1 



By what circumstances are the 
two cases distinguished ? 

What possible case is stated ? 

What is the rule of justice in 
such cases ? 

Give examples. 

Reason upon which the deter- 
mination proceeds ? 



CHAPTER X. 



CONTRACTS CONCERNING THE LENDING OF MONEY. 



What is said of the law of Mo- 
6es on this subject ? 

How is this interpretation con- 
firmed 1 

AVhat is said of the rate of in- 
terest ? 

The policy of these regulations 1 

What is said of compound inte- 
rest .? 

What question occurs ? 

Example 1 

How decided ? 

Why? 

Suppose the relative value of 
coin is altered ? 

Example 1 

Suppose a debasement of the 
coin ? 

By what is the borrower bound ? 

Consequence ? 



Illustrate. 

How has imprisonment for debt 
been represented ? 

When is it wrong ? 

When right ? 

What is said of frauds relating 
to insolvency 1 

Examples 1 

Why should the punishment be 
in the hands of the creditor ? 

How is imprisonment for debt 
to be considered ? 

When is it repugnant to hu- 
manity ? 

Why? 

What is said of an alteration of 
these laws ? 

Why would the poor be the suf- 
ferers ? 



CHAPTER XI. 



CONTRACTS OF LABOR. — SERVICE. 



What ought service to be ? 

How must the treatment of ser- 
vants be determined ? 

What are they not bound to 
obey 1 



Examples 1 

Is the master's authority a jus- 
tification of the servant ? 
Why ? 



QUESTIONS. 



323 



What is said of clerks and ap- 
prentices ? 

When is the master responsible 1 

Why ? Example ? 

What is said of the law on this 
subject ? Examples 1 

What is said of giving characters 
of servants ? 



What is said of obstructing a 
good servant's advancement ? 

Who is culpable for permitting 
vices among domestics ? 

From what does this result ? 

What are the scriptural direc 
tions to masters and servants ? 

What is said of these directions > 



CHAPTER XII. 



CONTRACTS OF LABOR. COMMISSIONS. 



When a man undertakes ano- 
ther's business, what does he pro- 
mise ? 

To what extent must he exert 
himself ? 

What does this rule define ? 

What is a chief difficulty of an 
agent's situation ? 

How will the latitude allowed to 
agents vary 1 

Examples 1 

If the agent acts without pay, 
who bears the loss ? 



What if the agent be hired f 

From what must the apprehen- 
sion be collected ? 

What are questions of this sort ? 

When is an agent bound with 
out custom ? Example. 

What is evidence that the owner 
considers the risk his ? 

With what exception will the 
loss always fall on the owner ? 

Can an agent claim compensa- 
tion for misfortunes ? 

Why not ? 



CHAPTER XIII. 



CONTRACTS OF LABOR. PARTNERSHIP. 



What on this subject requires 
explanation ? 
Rule ? 
Example 1 



If nothing be gained .' 
If stock be diminished ? 
Are all partners bound by what 
one does, and why? 



CHAPTER XIV. 



CONTRACTS OF LABOR. — OFFICES. 



In what offices is there a con- 
tract with the founder, and ano- 
ther with the electors ? 

Obligation of contract with the 
founder ? Why .-' 

To what does that with the 
electors extend ? Why ? 

From what duties only can 
electors excuse a person elected } 

What question arises ? 

First case in which an office may 
not be discharged by deputy ? Ex- 
ample. 

Second case ? Example 1 



Third case ? Example. 

Fourth case ? Example. 

What is said of the non-resi- 
dence of parochial clergy ? 

What case is supposed ? 

Only objection to the absence 
of the principal ? 

In what case is its force dimin- 
ished ? 

Why ? 

To whom is such indulgence 
due ? 

What misapplication of it is 
mentioned ^ 



S24 



QUESTIONS. 



What question is submitted ? 
On what do all dispensations 
from residence proceed ? 



Suppose it be said that the law 
excuses one ? 



CHAPTER XV. 



What is a lie, and why ? 

Consequences of lying ? 

First case of falsehoods which 
are not lies ? 

Why are they not 1 

Second case ? Examples. 

What is said of the conse- 
quences ? 

What is allowed by the laws of 
war .'* What not } 

Difference .'' 

What is said of the conduct of 
war ? 

of the termination ? 

What is said of exaggeration ? 

What considerations show the 
habit to be mischievous ? 



When is the faith of a hearer 
much perplexed ? 

A more serious objection to white 
lies ? Illustrate. 

What is said of pious frauds ? 

Suppose they are intended to do 
good ? 

Can there be a lie without direct 
falsehood ? 

What makes the lie ? 

When do we wilfully deceive ^ 

On what is the sense of words 
founded ? 

How may a man act a lie ? why .•• 

May there be lies of omissioli ? 

Example ? 



CHAPTEH XVI. 



How is the subject divided ? 

Of what does the form of oaths 
consist ^ 

What was the form among the 
Jews ? 

in Scotland ? 
among the 
Greeks and Romans ^ 

What is said of the forms in 
England ? 

What is said of the frequency 
of oaths .'' 

How might the evil be reme- 
died ? 

What is the signification of an 
oath ? 

Why do Quakers and Moravians 
refuse to swear ? 

What is necessary to the un- 
derstanding of the answer ? 

Why does not this prohibition 
relate to judicial oaths ? 



What if? laid of the seeming 
universaLty of the prohibition? 

By what is this interpretation 
strengthened .' 

In what instance did the Sa- 
vior not object to an oath ? 

What other passages of Scrip- 
ture contain the nature of oaths ? 

What is the conclusion .? 

When are oaths nugatory ? 

What is said of perjury ? 

Why ? 

What does the offence imply ? 

What does it violate ? 

At what does it strike .'' 

What renders it probable that 
oaths have a meaning different 
from a promise .'' 

When are promissory oaths not 
binding .'' 

How must oaths be interpreted 1 



QUESTIONS. 



CHAPTER XVn. 



OATH IN EVIDENCE. 



What does a witness swear ? 

What is said of designed conceal- 
ment ? 

Why is this a violation ? 

What is the only exception to 
this rule ? 

Is a man obliged to become his 
own accuser ? 

To what is this exception con- 
fined ? 

Suppose a point of honor make 
one backward ? 



When is the exception with- 
drawn ? 

What is said of tenderness to a 
prisoner ? 

Why ? 

Suppose irrelative questions be 
asked ? 

Why is the answer of the court 
authority to the witness ? 

Is the answer of the court al- 
ways conclusive ? 

Why ? 



CHAPTER XVni. 



OATH OF ALL,EGIA]yCE. 



Repeat the oath of allegiance. 

For what intended ? 

What does this oath exclude ? 

Example. 

What other design does it ex- 
clude ? 

What does it forbid ^ 

What often happens in despotic 
governments .'' 

What is said of one in this situ- 
ation ? 



Supposed cases and their con- 
sequence ^ 

What does this oath permit ? 

Why .' 

What does it require ? 

Why? 

Example. 

What does it not require ? 

Why.? 

What other objection to the 
contrary doctrine ? 



CHAPTER XIX. 



OATH AGAINST BRIBERY IN THE ELECTION OF MEMBERS OF 
PARLIAMENT. 



Substance of the oath ? 

What are some of the contri- 



\ vances to evade it, and what ia 
' said of them .? 



CHAPTER XX. 

OATH AGAINST SIMONY. 



What is Simony, and whence 
the name .? 

What is said of advowsons, and 
of the law relating to them ? 

Substance of the oath ? 



First case which the law ad- 
judges to be simony ? 

Second case ? Third case r 
Fourth case .' Fifth case : 
Remarks on the requisition ? 



826 



QUESTIONS. 



CHAPTER XXI. 



OATHS TO OBSERVE LOCAL. STATUTES. 



What is said of their obser- 
vance 1 

Of their unlawfulness ? 

Of impracticable directions 1 

Only question ? 

When is the intention of the 
founder satisfied ? 

What must the inconyeniency 
bel 



From what must it arise .'* 

Whyl 

Of what nature must it be 1 

Why ? 

What do some statutes forbid 
and require ? 

Why laid aside ? 



CHAPTER XXII. 

SUBSCRIPTION TO ARTICLES OF RELIGION. 



By what rule is this subscrip- 
tion governed ? 
What is the inquiry ? 
Who are not the imposers ? 
What is the imposer ? 



What did the authors of the law 
not intend ? 

Whom did they intend to ex- 
clude. First ? Second ? Third 1 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



What question ? 

Explain. 

What kinds of property may a 
man leave to whom he pleases ? 

What is said of other kinds ? 

What was shown in a former 
chapter ? 

In case of death, what becomes 
of such property ? 

What absurdity is mentioned 1 

How have wills generally been 
introduced ? 

Examples '? 

What does Tacitus relate ? 

In whose reign were lands first 
devised in England ? 

What are the advantages of 
wills'? 

What is the extent of entails in 
England ? 

Meaning of informal will ? 

What question respecting such 
wills 1 

How decided ? 



What is said of the regard due 
to kindred ? 

When a man's fortune is ac- 
quired by himself, what right has 
he? 

Why should a man provide for 
poor relations ? 

When is the not making a will 
culpable ? Why ? 

Consequence ? 

Anciently, when one died intes- 
tate, what followed ? 

How came wills, &c., within the 
cognizance of ecclesiastical courts? 

How must succession to intes- 
tates be regulated ? Why ? 

How should these regulations 
be guided ? 

What statutes are equitable ? 

How do they assign property ? 

With what absurdities may the 
English law be charged ? 

What is said of the inheritance 
of land and of money ' 



QUESTIOXa 



827 



BOOK III. 

PART II. 
OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH ARE INDETERMINATE. 

CHAPTER I. 



CHARITY. 



How is the term used ? 

What is charity in this sense ? 

What will direct our behavior 
towards superiors and towards 
equals i 



Towards those dependent on us ? 

Three principal methods of pro- 
moting the happiness of inferi- 
ors .'' 



CHAPTER II. 

CHARITY. THE TREATMENT OF OUR DOMESTICS AND DEPENDANTS 



Give the illustration of the sub- 
ject. 

How then should we conduct 
towards dependants ? 

What is said of our obligation .'' 

What mistake is mentioned ? 

Illustrate. 



What is another erroneous 
opinion ? 

What is manifestly wrong ? 

What does the rule forbid ? 1st, 
2d, 3d .' 

What are forbidden by the same 
principle ? 



CHAPTER III. 



What is said of the treatment 
of slaves ? 

What is slavery ? 

From what three causes may it 
arise i 

What is said of each case 1 

What is said of the African 
slave trade ? 

Why > 

Mention some of the crimes with 
which it is chargeable. 



Recite what is said of the neces- 
sity of the case. 

Of what was slavery a part .'' 

Is slavery condemned in the 
Scriptures 1 

Reasons 1 

Repeat what is said of discharg- 
ing slaves. 

In what way should emancipa- 
tion be effected ? 

How did Greek and Roman sla 
very decline i 



CHAPTER IV. 



CHARITY. PROFESSIONAL ASSISTANCE. 

From whom is professional aid ; ^yj^^t worthy object of pursuit 
to be expected ? is mentioned .? 

Principal object of all laws ? i 



328 



QUESTIONS. 



To whom is intrusted the appli- 
cation of parochial relief ? 

How may one of moderate for- 
tune and education be very use- 
ful ? 

Repeat wliat is said of aid 
afforded by physicians. 



How can an attorney easily as- 
sist the poor ? 

What exalted charity is men- 
tioned ? 

What office belongs to the min- 
isters of religion ? 



CHAPTER V. 



CHARITY. PECUNIARY BOUNTY. 



Arrangement of the subject ? 
1st, 2d, 3d ? 

Repeat what is said of pity. 

For what purpose was it im- 
planted in our nature ? 

Explain the claim of the poor 
from the law of nature. 

Suppose the partition of prop- 
erty is maintained against these 
claims ? 

How did the Saviour teach the 
duty of charity ? 

Conclusion from this passage of 
Scripture .'' 

How is it shown that these re- 
commendations have produced ef- 
fect ? 

Give the direction of St. Paul 
on this subject. 

How is this passage to be under- 
stood ? 

What is said of the effect of 
Christianity on first converts ? 

Substance of the passage from 
Acts 4th .' 

Is this a precedent for us 1 
Why.? 

How did the Apostles conduct 
on that occasion ? 

Second topic ? 

Every question supposes what ? 

How many kinds of charity 
claim attention .-* 

1. First kind } Explain. 

How would one who might 
waste a shilling use a guinea ? 

A greater recommendation of 
this kind of charity .'* 

2. Second method of doing good 
by charity ? 

Argument in favor of public 
charities ? 



Example. 

3. The last and lowest exertion 
of benevolence .'' 

Why not reject this kind ? 

By what will a good man be di- 
rected with regard to it ? 

Other species of charity recom 
mended ? 

What is said of proprietors of 
large estates in this connection .'' 

Who is the gainer by such pro- 
jects ? 

What question of importance 
occurs .'* 

Recite the passage of Scripture. 

Design of the passage .'' 

State the motives for doing 
alms in public. 

Remarks on these motives ? 

Give the precise distinction 
mentioned ? 

Reason of the distinction ? 

What liberality is not cha- 
rity ? 

Remarks ? 
Third topic ? 
First excuse ? 
Remark ? 
Second excuse ? 
Third excuse ? 
Answer from St. James ? 
Fourth excuse .'' Answer .? 
Fifth excuse ? Answer ? 
Sixth excuse,.'' Answer .'* 
Seventh excuse ? Answer ? 
Eighth excuse .'' Answer ? 
Ninth excuse .-* Answer 1 
Tenth excuse 1 Answer ? 
Eleventh excuse 1 Answer ^ 
Twelfth excuse .? Answer / 



QUESTIONS. 



CHAPTER VI. 

RESENTMENT. 



How is resentment distinguish- 
i? 

Meaning of anger ? 
Of revenge ? 



Farther remarks ? 
Why are anger and 
treated of separately ? 



revenge 



CHAPTER VII. 

ANGER. 



Whence is anger shown not to 
be always sinful ? Why ? 

In what cases does it become 
sinful ? 

Illustrate the first case. 

Why should it not continue 
long ? 

What do these precepts sup- 



In what does this power con- 
sist ? 



Mention some of the reflections 
which are called sedatives of 
anger. 

Reflection best calculated to al- 
lay the feelings of anger ? 

In what situation and circum 
stances should we imagine our- 
selves ? 

What is the point ? 



CHAPTER VIII. 



REVEXGE. 



Definition of revenge 1 

How may we know whether we 
are actuated by revenge, or a de- 
sire to inflict just punishment ? 

What is highly probable from 
the light of nature ? 

In what case is the probability 
converted into a certainty ? 

Repeat some of the passages 
from Scripture. 

Remarks on those passages .-' 

Suppose one who has offended us 
solicit our vote .'' 

Show why these passages do not 
interfere with punishment. 

What is said of the prosecutor ? 



What is said of the correction of 
vice by private persons .'' 

How may we discountenance vi- 
cious practices ? 

Scriptural authority ? 

In what instance does the use of 
association against vice continue ? 

To what extent may we practice 
caution ? 

Example ? 

If a benefit can be conferred on 
one only .'' 

How did Christ estimate vir- 
tues, and what did he prefer ? 

How did he show this prefer 
ence .'' 

By what is it justified ? Whj ' 



CHAPTER IX. 

DUELLING. 



As what is duelling absurd ? 

Why.? 

Why not better as a reparation .'' 

Is it considered as either .? 

What causes duelling ? 

Two considerations mentioned ? 



State the only question. 

Show how the duellist is a mur 
derer. 

In what case would there be an 
end of morality ? 

What excuse is offered .' 



330 



QUESTIONS. 



Answer. 

In what case would duelling be- 
come assassination ? 

Does the circumstance of self- 
cxposure make any difference ? 

What is said of this defence ? 

What is supposed ? Why ? 

In return what is done ? Why ? 

Why unnecessary to distinguish 



I between him who gives, and him 
who accepts the challenge ? 

What is said of public opinion ? 

Why ? 

What is said of the law of the 
land ? 

How might this be remedied in 
the army ? 

Why cannot duelling be punish- 
ed ? 



CHAPTER X. 



LITIGATION. 



Is it possible always to live 
peaceably ? 

How are the instances in Mat- 
thew to be understood ? 

Recite the first and the remarks 
on it. 

From what are the several ex- 
amples drawn ? 

What is said of a rule forbid- 
ding all opposition to injury ? 

Repeat what is said of the con- 
duct of Paul. 

In what cases does Christianity 
forbid going to law .'' 

In what three cases is it allowa- 
ble! 



How is the prosecutor bound to 
proceed ? Examples. 

First direction given ? 

Second ? 

Third ? 

Fourth 1 

In criminal prosecutions, how 
should the prosecutor proceed ? 

In what degree is the sufferer 
bound to prosecute ? 

What ought not to be spared ? 

Of what offences is there great 
merit in the prosecutor ? 

What is said of an informer ? 

Of prosecutions for reward 1 

Example. 



CHAPTER XI. 

GRATITUDE. 



In what consists the mischief of 
ingratitude .'' Remarks. 

On what does this sort of kind- 
ness depend ? 

A second reason for cultivating 
a grateful temper 1 

Is this virtue omitted in the 
Scriptures 1 



Explain. 

With what will expressions of 
gratitude vary ? 

What cannot grc^titude do 1 

Examples. 

What argues a total destitution 
of delicacy, generosity, and moral 
probity ? 



CHAPTER XII. 



SLANDER. 



Speaking is what ? Why 1 

Repeat what the Savior said, 
and the explanation. 

How is slander distinguished ? 

Definition of malicious slander .? 

What may vary the degree of 
guilt ? 

Farther remarks ? 

To what is the idea of slander 
confined ? Remarks. 

What are the objects and ofi&ces 
of slander ? 

By what is the guilt measured ? 



What are aggravations of the 
offence ? 

Why ? 

In what does inconsiderate 
slander consist .-' 

In what consists the guilt ? 

What is no answer to this cri- 
mination ? 

Examples. 

What is not slander ? 

What is the opposite of slander ? 

Remarks. 



QI7ESTIOX8. 



331 



BOOK III. 



PART III. 

OF RELATIVE DUTIES WHICH RESULT FROM THE CON- 
STITUTION OF THE SEXES. 



What is the foundation of mar- 
riage ? 

Subjects collateral to mar- 
riage ? 



Subjects consequential to mar- 
riage ? 

Order in which those subjects 
are treated 1 



CHAPTER I. 



OF THE PUBLIC USE OF MARRIAGE INSTITUTIONS. 



In what consists the public use 
of marriage institutions ? 
First beneficial effect ? 
Remarks and reason. 
Second beneficial effect ? 
Third? 



Fourth ? 
Fifth ? 
Sixth ? 

What is said of ancient na- 
tions ? 

Examples. 



CHAPTER II. 



FORNICATIOX. 



1. What tendency has the crime 
of fornication ? 

Why does it discourage mar- 
riage ? 

How may one comprehend the 
magnitude of the mischief ? 

Excuses of the libertine ? 

Answer. 

2. Fornication supposes what ? 
Consequences ? 

3. What does it produce ? 
Influence on the mind ? 
Remarks . 

Influence on the mind in low 
life ? 

In high life ? 

Additional consideration ? 

4. What other bad effect ? 
How do the Scriptures regard 

this crime ? 
With what society is it classed ? 
Remark. 



Recite a passage decisive of its 
guilt. 

Recite what is said of austeri- 
ties which have been imposed. 

Remarks respecting brothels .'' 

Duty of legislators ? 

What apology is offered ? 

Answer. 

Another species of the crime ? 

Give the apology. 

First reply ? 

Second ? 

Third 1 

Suppose the marriage rite a 
mere form ? 

How do the Scriptures leave 
the subject ? 

Give the plain account of the 
question . 

What is said of all incentives to 
fornication \ 

Of indecent conversation 1 

Of impure thoughts 1 



332 



QUESTIONS. 



CHAPTER III. 



SEDUCTIO]>r. 



What stratagems does a seducer 
practice ? 

How does the law of honor re- 
gard them ? 

How is seduction accomplished ? 

Remarks ? 

How is the injury consider- 
ed ? 

1. What is the injury to the 
woman ? 

What is said of the pain ? Re- 
marks ? 



What is said of the loss ? Re* 
marks ? 

What is said of a rule of life ? 
What is said of moral principle i 

2. How may the injury to thft 
family be understood ? Illustra 
tion. 

3. What is the loss to the pub- 
lic ? 

To what extent is the seducer 
answerable ? 
Suppose we pursue the effects ? 



CHAPTER IV. 

ADULTERY. 



How does the crime of adultery 
differ from that of seduction ? 

By what is the woman's infi- 
delity aggravated ? 

Supposed excuse ? 

First answer ? 

Second answer ? 

What is said of the vow, and of 
the married offender ? 

What is said of behavior tend- 
ing to captivate affections of a 
married woman 1 

Usual apology for adultery ? 

What remarks are made in re- 

ply •' 

What trifling with words is 
mentioned ? 



What is said of the Scriptural 
declarations 1 

What is said of the case of the 
woman taken in adultery ? 

Design of those who tempted 
the Savior at that time ? 

Recite what is said of the beha 
vior of Christ. 

How is the question "hath no 
man condemned thee," under- 
stood '\ 

What proves that he spoke of a 
judicial condemnation ? 

How is the reply " neither do I 
condemn thee," to be understood ? 

How is this crime regarded by 
the law of England 1 



CHAPTER V. 



Why is abhorrence of this crime | On what are other restrictions 



inculcated ? 

What may be said to be forbid- 
den by the law of nature ? 



founded ? 

Legal provisions in England .'' 
Legal provisions among other 

nations .' 



CHAPTER VI. 

POLYGAMY. 



How is the intention of God in- 
timated ? 

Another indication of his will ^ 



Repeat some of the bad effects 
of polygamy . 

Does it compensate for these 
evils ? 



QUESTIONS. 



333 



What is said of the Jewish cus- 
toms in regard to polygamy ? 

Recite the Scriptural account 
of the subject . 

What nations allowed it ? 

What nations have prohibited it? 

CHAPTER 



How punished in Sweden ? 
In England ? 

HoAv regarded by the Medes ? 
What (fid Caesar find in En- 
gland ? 

VII. 



OF DIVORCE. 



Meaning of divorce ? 

In what places allowed ? 

What is the question before us ? 

In the first place, why incon- 
sistent with duty ? 

Incompatible with what ? 

Only principle of the law of na- 
ture applicable to the question ? 

Suppose we say they are ex- 
cluded by the terms of contract ? 

Suppose we argue that the ob- 
ligation continues as long as the 
purpose of the contract requires ? 

If we contend that a contract 
cannot be dissolved unless the 
parties be replaced in their for- 
Ttier situation ? 

What does the author confess ? 

Suppose we trace the effects of 
mch a rule ? 

What is said of a lawgiver di- 
rected by views of utility ? 



1, What is said of first advan- 
tage '? 

Of these considerations 1 
Of the second effect ? 

2. Of the second advantage ? 
Why is divorce considered as 

depending on the husband ? 

To what do the same objections 
apply ? 

In what cases does the law of 
nature make an exception ? 

What does it not indulge ? 

What is said of Milton's story .? 

Remarks 1 

Of the Scriptures ? 

Examples ? 

Of a desire of both to separate ? 

Of the law in England ? 

What was proposed to the leg- 
islature ? 

What is said of the proposal ? 

Of sentences of ecclesiastical 
courts ? 



CHAPTER VIII. 

MARRIAGE. 



What is said of the marriage 
rite ? 

Of one main article ? 

The terms of the covenant are 
stated to discover what .'' 1st, 2d, 
3d? 

What do they promise ? 

What do they engage by the 
vow ? 

What does St. Paul say ? 

In what case would a man be 
guilty of prevarication ? 



To whom else is this charge im- 
puted ? 

How is the crime of falsehood 
incurred ? 

How is the marriage vow vio- 
lated ? 

Late regulation of the law in 
England ? 

By the Roman law ? 

In France ? In Holland ? 

Is the distinction well-founded ? 

Why ? 



CHAPTER IX. 



or THE DUTY OF PARENTS. 

What is said of this class of du- 
ties ? 

Of the low estimation of these 
virtues ? 



Of the power of association ? 

Of a solicitous care of one's fa- 
mily ? 



834 



QUESTIONS. 



Of the subject, and motive of 
these duties ? 

Of the offices of a parent dis- 
charged from consciousness of ob- 
ligation 1 

When do moralists tell more 
than is true ? Y/hy 1 

Of what does the duty of pa- 
rents admit ? 

Explain under what heads. 

1. What is said of maintenance ? 
From hence, whose guilt may 

we learn ? 

Scriptural judgment of the ob- 
ligation ? 

2. What is said of education ? 
Why necessary ? 

In inferior classes, what is con- 
demned by this principle ? 

In the middle orders 1 

8. What is said of provision for 
a child's happiness ? 

Of first two articles ? 

Of a peasant ? 

Of a clergyman'? &c. 

Of providing a child with a 
situation ? 

Of what can be expected as a 
duty? 

Of an ill-judged thrift in rich 
parents ? 



Of the disposal of fortunes after 

parents' death ? 

Of making a difference between 
children ? 

Of daughters ? 

Of satisfying children's expec- 
tations ? 

Of the claims of legitimate chil- 
dren and bastards ? 

Of diminishing a child's por- 
tion ? 

Of disinherison ? 

Of " every man may do what he 
will with his own ?" 

Of the plea, «' children," " large 
families," " charity begins at 
home ?" 

Principal part of a parent's 
duty still behind ? 

Remarks ? 

For this purpose, what is the 
first point to be endeavored after ? 

Illustrations and examples ? 

A good parent's first care 1 

Second ? 

Examples ? 

How may the early inclinations 
of children be corrected or im- 
proved ? 

Examples ? 



CHAPTER X. 



THE RIGHTS OF PARENTS. 



From what do the rights of pa- 
rents result ? Illustrations 1 

Right in regard to professions 1 

Suppose a competition of com- 
mands 1 

Death of one parent ? 

Case of guardians ? 



In what cases have parents no 
natural rights ? 

What is said of slavery and 
children of slaves ? 

When do parents exceed their 
just authority ? 

Examples ? 



CHAPTER XI. 



THE DUTY OF CHILDREN. 



The duty of children may be 
considered how ? 

1. What is said of it during 
childhood ? 

2. After they have attained to 
manhood, but continue in their 
father's family 1 



3. After they have attained to 
manhood, and have left their fa- 
ther's family "? 

The most serious contentions 
between parents and children ? 

What has a parent, in no case, 
a right to do ? 



QUESTIONS. 



Remarks 1 

What is the point ? 

Give the illustrations and the 
conclusion. 

What is said of urging children 
upon marriages ? 

Of parents' duty in such cases } 



Of interference, where a trust 

is reposed ? 

Of relief of indigent parents 1 

Of support, by the law of En- 
gland 1 

Of disobedience, by Jewish law 1 



BOOK VI. 



DUTIES TO OURSELVES. 



Why is this division of the sub- 
ject retained ? 

Do many duties or crimes termi- 
nate in one's self ? 



What are considered under this 
head ? 



CHAPTER I. 



THE RIGHTS OF SELF-DEFENCE. 



What has been asserted con- 
cerning the right of self-defence ? 

Is there any doubt of this ? 

Why 1 

How only can perfect right be 
distinguished .' 

Why is this right suspended in 
civil society .? 

Is this evident in a state of na- 
ture ? 

Is the ca&e altered by living in 
civil society ? 

Why not ? 



To what cases is this liberty re- 
strained } 

In what cases does the rule 
holdl 

What other instance seems to 
justify the same extremities .'' 

How ought the taking away of 
life to be considered in all other 
cases ? 

Mention the cases in which ho- 
micide is justifiable in England. 

Are the rights of war here ta- 
ken into the account .'' 



CHAPTER II. 



DRUNKENNESS. 



What is said of drunkenness 

How is what is here said to 
vmderstood .' 

What is every habit ? 

What is the first bad efifect 
this vice ? 

Second 1 Third ? 

Fourth ? Fifth ? 

What other may be add^d ? 

Illustrate. 



be 



of 



By what is this account con- 
firmed } 

Remark connected with this ob- 
servation .'' 

In what manner may the moral- 
ist expostulate .'' 

What is necessary in order to 
judge truly of this vice ? 

What other bad effects are 
omitted ? 



336 



QUESTIONS. 




Why? 

Repeat tlie passage from St. 
Paul in wMch drunkenness is for- 
bidden. 

What question of importance ? 

What is first supposed ? 

Rule resulting from this princi- 
ple .? 

Mention the remark upon this 
rule. 

Suppose the privation of reason 
be only partial 1 

For what is the drunkard res- 
ponsible ? 



What guilt is incurred by the 
commission of crime by a sober 
man ? 

By one intoxicated ? 

Illustrate. 

Is the appetite for intoxicating 
liquors acquired 1 

Proof of this ? 

From what does this habit take 
its rise ? 

Is it continued from the same 
motive ? 



CHAPTER III. 



What is said of suicide -' 

What has occasioned confusion 
ind doubtfulness in this question 1 

True question in the argument ? 

First case supposed ? 

Answer ? 

Second case ? 

Answer ? 

To what will all rules bring us 1 

Y/hat would be the effect of such 
4 toleration ? 

Second consideration mention- 
ed? 

Does, this argument prove sui- 
cide to be a crime ? 

By what will each case of sui- 
cide be aggravated ? 

How has the subject hitherto 
been pursued ? 

What is next to be inquired ? 

How can the inference deduced 
from Scripture be sustained ? 



1. Mention some observations to 
this purpose which occur. 

With what are these expressions 
inconsistent? 

2. What quality did Christ and 
his apostles strongly inculcate 1 

What passage in particular com- 
bats all impatience of distress ? 
Two queries upon this passage 1 

3. What is said of the conduct 
of the apostles and early Chris- 
tians ? 

Suppose we deny to an indi- 
vidual a right over his own life ? 

From what is this right derived ? 

For what else will it be difficult 
to account ? 

From what errors does this rea- 
soning arise ^ 

What is the truth 1 

What constitutes the right of 
the state '? 



QUESTIONS. 



337 



BOOK V. 

DUTIES TOWARD GOD. 



CHAPTER I. 



DIVISION OF THESE DUTIES. 



What are called duties toward 1 What is the difference between 



God? 



them .'' Illustrate. 



How is our duty toward God di- j Of what is divine worship com- 
vided ? 1 posed ^ 

CHAPTER II. 



OF THE DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER, SO FAR AS THE SAME 
APPEAR FROM THE LIGHT OF NATURE. 



What is done by one desiring a 
favor from another .' 

On what does the duty of pray- 
Br depend ? 

Import of the efficacy of prayer ? 

Objection urged against this ? 

Answer to this objection .' 

What question may be here 
asked ? 

First argument in reply ^ 

Second argument in reply ? 

Third argument in reply .'' 

What is the question with the 
petitioner ? 

Is it necessary that the cause by 
which prayers prevail be known ? 

What is necessary ^ 

What must be granted to the 
objection ^ 

Suppose there was a prince, 
known to act always for the best .'' 



Give the illustration. 

What does the objection to 
prayer suppose .'' 

Reply ? ' 

What other principle does the 
objection assume .-* 

What do both these positions 
presume ? 

How ought we to apply to the 
divine nature such expressions 
as these, " God must always do 
what is right 1"&c. 

Next objection ? 

What is said of the appeal to 
experience ? Examples ^ 

Suppose the efficacy of prayer 
so constant as to be relied on be- 
forehand .'' 

With what are some offended ? 

Farther remarks .' 



CHAPTER III. 

OF THE DUTY AND EFFICACY OF PRAYER, AS REPRESENTED IN 
SCRIPTURE. 



What is said of the reflections 
in the preceding chapter ? 

Suppose we prove that the effi- 
cacy of prayer is not inconsistent 
with the attributes of the Deity ^ 



P 



To what does the light of nature 
leave us .-' 

What supplies this defect of na- 
tural religion ? 

What do they require 1 



838 



QUESTIONS. 



In what case should we have no 
motive to prayer ? 

On what must this belief be 
founded ? 

What do the Scriptures affirm ? 

Repeat the heads to which the 
texts mentioned are applicable. 

Mention some texts enjoining 
prayer in general. 



Examples of prayer for partic- 
ular favors by name ? 

Directions to pray for public 
blessings .'' 

Examples of intercession for 
others ^ 

Examples and directions for re- 
petition of unsuccessful pray- 
ers } 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF PRIVATE PRAYER, FAMILY PRAYER, AND PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



What is first to be observed 
concerning these descriptions of 
prayers .'' 

1. First advantage of private 
prayer mentioned ? 

Second advantage of private 
prayer mentioned ? 

Third advantage of private 
prayer mentioned ? 

Fourth advantage of private 
prayer mentioned ? 

2. What is the peculiar use of 
family piety 1 

What may be added to this } 

3. What is said of public wor- 
ship ? 

What do these assemblies aiFord.^ 
What is ascribed to the regular 



establishment of assemblies for 
divine worship ? 

What is said of two reasons 
above stated ? Why ? 

What does this argument meet ? 

What is this apology .'* 

Who will be the last to prefer 
this excuse ? 

What should the same conside- 
ration overrule .'' 

Other advantage of joining in 
public worship ? 

What do these assemblies force 
upon our thoughts ? 

Is public worship a duty of Di- 
vine appointment ? 

Mention the texts in proof that 
it is. 



CHAPTER V. 



OF FORMS OF PRAYER IN PUBLIC WORSHIP. 



Only reason for receiving or re- 
jecting forms of prayer ? 

How is this expediency to be 
gathered .'' 

1. First advantage of a liturgy '? 

2. Second ? 

Reasons and illustrations .'' 

What is said of joint prayer ? 

Of this objection .'' 

First inconvenience ? Second ? 

How obviated ? 

What is said of the Lord's pray- 
er ? 

What are the properties re- 
quired in a public liturgy ? 

1. First property of a liturgy ? 
What would be no difficult 
task ^ 



Reasons why a liturgy should 
not be too short ? 

Too long 1 

What is said of the length and 
repetitions in the liturgy ? 

Alterations proposed I 

What is said in commendation 
of the liturgy of the Church of 
England 1 

2. Second property 1 

Repeat what is said of this 
property. 

8. Third property '? 

What form of prayer has most 
merit'? Remarks'? 

y/hat is said of the state pray- 
ers '! 

4. Fourth property 1 Remarks'? 



QUESTIONS. 



889 



CHAPTER VI. 



OF THE USE OF SABBATICAL. INSTITUTIONS. 



Why is it necessary to have the 
same time established for the pur- 
poses of religious worship ? 

What is said of defending the 
institution as it is required to be 
observed in Christian countries ? 

First advantage of the institu- 
tion ? 



Remarks ? 

Is anything lost by it .•* 

Why ? 

Second advantage ? 

Remarks ? 

Third advantage ? 

What is said of these reasons r 



CHAPTER VII. 

OF THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT OF SABBATICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



Two questions on this subject ? 

1. In treating the first, what is 
necessary ? 

First Scriptural account of the 
Sabbath ? 

What is found on this subject 
in Exodus xvi. 1 

What is said of the transaction 
in the wilderness ? 

Of the passage in the second 
chapter of Genesis ? 

Of this interpretation ? 

Of the account in Nehemiah 1 

Of the fourth commandment ? 

How was the Sabbath, in fact, 
observed among the Jews 1 

What is the main question ? 

In what case would it be bind- 
ing on all ? 

In what only on the Jews ? 

What is said of the former opin- 
ion ? Of the latter 1 

By what is the latter confirm- 
ed! 



What is said of the distinction 
of the Sabbath 1 

What is said of the command by 
which it was instituted ? 

What is said of its observance 
by the Apostles ? 

What is said of its observance 
by St. Paul ? 

What is said of two objections ? 

What is said of the first objec- 
tion 1 

What is said of the second ob- 
jection 1 

2. Important question 1 

What is said of the practice of 
the holding religious assemblies ? 

What is said of the duty con- 
tended for by these proofs 1 

What is said of the opinion that 
Christ and his apostles meant to 
retain the duties of the Jewish 
Sabbath ? 

Conclusion from the whole in- 
quiry ? 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BY VV^HAT ACTS AND OMISSIONS THE OUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN 
SABBATH IS VIOLATED. 



What ought to be the manner 
of observing the Sabbath ? 

First use proposed by the insti- 
tution ? 

Second 1 

Third ? 

How was the day regarded by 
the primitive Christians 1 



By what, in the first place, is 
the duty of the day violated 1 

By what in the second place 1 

By what in the third place ? 

What questions have often been 
asked ? Answer ? 

What is said of the example of 
other countries ? 



840 



QUESTIONS. 



CHAPTER IX. 



OF REVERENCING THE DEITY. 



What is said of the habit of re- 
verencing the Deity ? 

What has God forbidden ? 

When is the mention vain ? 

Remarks ? 

By whom is this prohibition re- 
cognized ? Example ? 

How did the Jews probably in- 
terpret the prohibition ? 

What is said of the offence of 
profane swearing ? 

Of contempt of positive duties ? 

Of mockery and ridicule ? Re- 
marks ? 

Of the infidel ? 

Of religious disquisitions ? 

Of what we are entitled to de- 
mand in behalf of religion ? 

Of hostilities which have been 
•raged against it 1 



Of one unbeliever ? 

Of another ? 

Remarks ? 

Of a third ? Remarks t 

Of a fourth ? Remarks ? 

Of these topics ? 

What questions are asked in 
this connection ? 

How is infidelity served up ? 

Remarks ? 

What is said of an eloquent his 
torian ? 

Of his history ? 

Of the enemies of Christianity 1 

Remarks ? 

Of seriousness and levity ? 

Of this licentiousness ? 

Of those who see little in Chris- 
tianity ? 

Of a future state ? 



BOOK IV. 

ELEMENTS OF POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE. 



CHAPTER I. 

OF THE ORIGIN OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT. 



What was government at first ? 
Foundation of civil govern- 
ment ? 

How are men prepared for so- 
ciety 1 

What contains the rudiments of 
an empire ? Remarks 1 

Recite what is said of the pro- 
gress of government. 

At the death of the original 
progenitor, what would happen ? 

To what might the prospect of 
these inconveniences prompt the 
first ancestor ? Consequence 1 

Second source of personal au- 
thority ? 

Show how this would have such 
an effect. 



What is more difiicult to be ex- 
plained ? 

Mention the causes which in- 
troduced hereditary dominion . 

Additional reasons. 

How is this account rendered 
probable ? 

What does the history of an- 
cient nations inform us ? 

How are these nations consider- 
ed ? 

Suppose a country peopled by 
shipwreck ? 

Need we be surprised at the 
early existence of vast empires ? 
Why? 

What presumption does this 
theory afford ? Why -? 



tiUESTIO^S. 



341 



CHAPTER II. 

HOW SUBJECTION TO CIVIL. GOVERNMENT IS MAINTAINED. 



What state of things seem very 
surprising ] 

In whom resides the physical 
strength of a nation ? 

What inquiry arises in every 
political speculation 1 

By what is the difficulty remo- 
ved, but not resolved ? 

Suppose no single reason will 
account for general submission ? 

Into what three distinctions of 
character are subjects divided ? 

1. By what are those deter- 
mined who obey from prejudice ? 

In monarchies and aristocra- 
cies, how does this operate ? 

How in republics ? 

Is not this wonderful ? Why 
not r 



What rights are founded on 
prescriptions ? 

How is the prescriptive title 
corroborated in monarchies 1 

How was it in Kome and other 
nations ? 

In Thibet ? Remarks ? 

2. By what are they determined 
who obey from reason ? 

3. How are they kept in order 
who obey from self-interest 1 

First caution suggested ? 

Second caution suggested ? 

What follows ? 

What is said of names ? 

Example 1 

Third caution ? 

Fourth ? 

Worst effect of popular tumults i 



CHAPTER III. 

THE DUTY OF SUBMISSION TO CIVIL GOVERNMENT EXPLAINED. 



How is this subject distinguish- 
ed from that of the last chapter ? 

Usual method of proving civil 
obedience to be a duty ? 

First compact ? 

State the conditions of this 
compact ? 

What is this transaction some- 
times called ? 

What do they form ? 

Second compact ? 

What is said of this account of 
the subject 1 

Why is such a compact impossi- 
ble ? 

What transaction approaches to 
such a compact ? 

Repeat what is said of it. 

Even here what was presup- 
posed ? 

What was wanting to this 
union ? 

What are we told ? 

Answer ? 

How is the original convention 
appealed to and treated ? 

In what cases are we referred 
to it ? 



What would they teach us to 
believe ? 

Repeat the argument. 

Remark and answer \ 

Mention a defect. 

What is still less possible ? 

Suppose the subject bound by 
his own consent, what question ? 

If we admit the smooth argu- 
ment, what must be proved ? 

Remarks respecting this right ? 

Why does this theory merit dis- 
cussion ? 

First wrong conclusion to which 
it leads ? 

What is said of these points 1 

Second conclusion ? 

Reasons of this conclusion ? 

Third conclusion .'' 

Reasons and remarks ? 

What, then, is the only ground 
of the subject's obligation.-' 

Repeat the several steps of the 
argument, and the conclusion. 

How is the justice of each case 
of resistance determined : 

Who shall ju ige of this ? 

Why .? 



342 



QUESTIONS. 



Is danger of error and abuse 
any objection 1 

Why not ? 

What should be observed ? 

What does the author proceed 
to point out ? 

1. First inference 1 
• 2. Second ? 

Example 1 

3. Third? 
Example 1 

4. Fourth? 
Why ? 

6. Fifth? 

How are these points wont to 
be approached 7 

What is said of such reasons ? 



6. Sixth inference 1 
What is admitted { 
First reason 1 
Second reason ? 

7. Seventh inference ? 

What does the author not mean 
to say is necessary ? 
Why 1 

What is affirmed ? 
Example 1 

By what are public advantages 
measured ? 

By what are public evils mea- 
sured 1 

Consequence to colonies ? 
What is said of the result 1 



CHAPTER IV. 



OF THE DUTY OF CIVIL. OBEDIENCE AS STATED IN THE 
SCRIPTURES. 



CHRISTIAN 



What is affirmed as to extent of 
civil rights and obligations ? 

What passages have been al- 
leged in this controversy 1 

liepeat the two questions, and 
what is said of them . 

Mention the points on which 
one might entertain doubts. 

How would you reply ? 

How might you be accosted af- 
terwards 1 

How would you consider the 
3ase, and how reply ? 

Suppose you were upbraided 
with a change of opinion ?&c. 

Difference in these two conver- 
sations 1 

What other duties are enjoined 
in the same manner ? 

Of what has no one any doubt ? 

What might we expect in letters 
or dissertations ? 

Why not in Scripture 1 

What is said of this distinction 1 



On what do many commentators 
proceed as certainty ? 

To what do the two 
apply 1 

How? 

Suppose the two apostles wrote 
with a view to this question ? 

Between what two cases exists 
no resemblance 1 

Of what can we not judge ? 

Only defect in this account ^ 

What do they supply 1 

Examples ? 

What did the teachers of Chris- 
tianity extol 1 

Consequence 1 

What passages from St. Peter 
seem to allude to an error of this 
kind 1 

What is said of the passage re- 
specting the ordinance of God '? 

What is said o f the divine right 
of kings 1 

By what are princes ordained '^ 



CHAPTER V. 



OF CIVIL. LIBERTY. 



What is civil liberty 1 
What is national liberty 1 
Suppose one desires to do what- 
ever he pleases 1 



Where does the liberty of a 
state of nature exist 1 

How, in society, is liberty aug- 
mented 1 Why 1 



QUESTIONS. 



843 



Illustrate. 

Import of the definition of civil 
liberty ? 

First thing intimated "? Second .' 
Third .? Fourth ? 

In what case ought this maxim 
to be remembered ? 

What follows from this account ? 

Distinction between personal and 
civil liberty -* Examples ? 

By what are these examples 
justified ? Remarks ? 

Give another idea of civil liber- 
ty- 

Example > 

What have they lost } 

What have they changed ? Ex- 
ample of some kind 1 



Suppose it probable that the 
welfare of the people would be as 
studiously consulted 1 

Wnat distinction in respect of 
liberty ? 

What is said of these definitions 
of civil liberty .? 

Examples ? 1st .' 2d 1 3d 1 4th ? 
5th ? 6th ? 7th 1 

Under what inaccuracy do they 
all labor 1 

Example ? Remarks ? 

What definitions of civil liberty 
ought to be rejected? 

What will not be thought extra- 
ordinary 1 

Give the conclusion. 



CHAPTER VI. 



OF DIFFERENT FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. 



What power must there be in 
every government 1 

Terms applied to this power .'' 

Who is called sovereign or su- 
preme power 1 

Why is the same also called the 
legislature .-* 

A government receives its de- 
nomination from what } Remark ? 

Remarks on the three forms of 
government ? 

Define the first form. 

Second } 

Third ? 

Separate advantages of monar- 
chy '? 

Mischiefs, or dangers of monar- 
chy ? 

Separate advantages of aristoc- 
racy } 

Mischiefs ? 

Advantages of a republic } 

Evils ? 

What is said of a mixed govern- 
ment ? 

Secrecy and despatch ? 

Profusion, exaction .?&c. 

Of what may the same observa- 
tion be repeated } 

Which is to be preferred, an he- 
reditary or elective monarchy ? 



Why ? Is nothing gained 1 

Additional remark. 

What should not be forgotten ? 

Where may this benefit be ex- 
pected '? 

First kind of aristocracy 1 

Example ? 

Second kind } 

Example } 

What is said of these two forms, 
and why is the first the better .? 

Of all species of denomina- 
tions, which is most odious 1 

Why ? 

Of what does Europe exhibit 
more than one example 1 

Example, in Denmark 1 

In Sweden 1 

In England 1 

What is the lesson to be drawn 
from such events *? 

Why .? 

Of the other advantages of a de- 
mocracy ; which is the first 1 

Repeat the reasoning and re- 
marks on this advantage. 

Second advantage 1 

Illustration '? 

Third advantage '? 

Influence of subjects of this 
sort ? 



344 



QUESTIONS. 



What is said of men in the mid- 
dle age ? 

Of these topics ? 

Of secrecy of despotic govern- 
ments ? 

Of the loss and mention of it ? 

Answer ? 

Of a republic as suited only to 
a small state ? 

Of elections ? 



Of representation ? 
Of him who represents two hun- 
dred thousand ? 
Of appeal ? 
Of factions ? 

Of mechanism and motions ? 
Answer to these objections'? 
What is said of the limits ? 
Of the experiment ? 



CHAPTER VII. 



OF THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION. 



What is meant by the constitu- 
tion of a country ? 

Of what principles does the Eng- 
lish constitution consist ? 

For what reason is this plain 
definition necessary 1 

In what sense may an act of 
parliament be unconstitutional ? 

How do most writers consider 
the British constitution ? 

Repeat what is said on this sub- 
ject ? 

What is said of the actual state 
of government and the theory ? 

Of questions of reform ? 

Consequence ? 

Of political innovations and the 
consequences 1 Example 7 

Of these instances adduced ? 

Of the ends of civil government ? 

Remarks ? 

Of the government of England ? 

What is the first contrivance for 
the interests of its subjects 1 

What is the second ? 

Third % 
Ans. begins, " By annexing." 

Fourth } 
Ans. " The elections." 

Fifth .' 
Ans. '' The number." 

Sixth } 
Ans. '' The representatives." 

Seventh 1 

Ans. *' The proceedings." 

Eighth ? 
Ans. " The representative is 
60 far." 

Ninth ? 



Ans. " When intelligence." 

Tenth .? 

Ans. " To prevent." 

Eleventh .? 

Ans. " In the defence." 

To what do the dangers to be 
apprehended from regal govern- 
ment relate } * 

Remarks '^ 

What is the first precaution up- 
on taxation .'' 

Ans '' The application." 

First precaution in the infliction 
of punishment ^ 

Second .^ 
Ans. "and whereas." 

Third 7 

Ans. " Treason being." 

How has the British constitution 
provided for its own preservation .•' 

What is meant by a balance of 
power 1 Examples 1 

What is said of the maxim, 
"that the king can do no wrong V 

Give the several illustrations. 

What is meant by the balance 
of interest .? 

Give the three illustrations. 

What is the first proper use and 
design of the House of Lords. 

Second 1 Third } 

Repeat the amount of what is 
said on the third . 

V/hat is said of the personal 
privileges of the peerage .'' 

Of the admission of ecclesias- 
tics : 

Of exempting members from 
arrest for debt ^ 



QUESTIONS. 



345 



Of the irregulfirity of popular 
representation ? 

Of this incong.uity 1 

In the rem irks which follow, 
what does the author wish to have 
understood ? 



Remarks respecting 
already have ?" 



\\ hat we 



[Let the scholar give the sum of 
what is said on this subject.] 



CHAPTER VIII. 



OF THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE. 



What is the first maxim of a free 
fitate ? Why ? 

Give the illustration. 

Provision for these dangers in 
England .' Illustration. 

In what cases is this fundamen- 
tal rule violated 1 

Remarks ? 

The next security for impartial 
administration of justice .-' 

Illustration and remarks 1 

A third precaution ? 

Reasoning on the subject .-' 

A fourth requisite, and the re- 
marks ? 

How is something gained to the 
pu':l:c ? 

Lastly, what is said of several 
courts .'' 

What are the two kinds of judi- 
cature ? 

What are they called 1 

What is said of the former ? 

Of the second kind ? 

Of the combination of the two 
species ? 

Of deviation from this mode of 
trial .? 

Of the imperfection of trial by 
jury 1 

Of a second division of courts of 
justice .'' 

Of inconveniences of each ? 

Illustration. 

Of proceedings and precedents ? 

Of two reasons on which defe- 
rence to prior decisions is founded .'' 

Of two things gained by adher- 
ing to precedents .'' 



When justice is rendered, what 
is but half done ? 

Remarks ? 

Two consequences which arise 
from adherence to precedents ? 

What question occurs to a mind 
revolving upon the subject of hu- 
man jurisprudence .' 

Illustration .'' 

What is said of accounting for 
the existence of so many sources 
of litigation in the first place '? 

Example 1 

Secondly 1 

Illustrations 1 

Thirdly *] 

Illustrations ' 

Fourthly 1 

Illustrations 1 

Fifthly 1 

Illustrations } 

Sixthly 1 

Illustrations ? 

Seventhly ? 

Illustrations ? 

Finally .? 

Illustrations .'* 

What is said of doubtful and ob- 
scure points of law ? 

Of two peculiarities in the judi- 
cial constitution 1 

Of the first ? 

Remarks .'' 

Of the second ? 

Remarks .'' 

Conclusion ? 

Ans. " These, however, if real." 



CHAPTER IX. 

OF CRIMES AND PUNISHMENTS. 

What is the proper end of hu- I Give the explanation and the 
man punishments ? \ proof. 

P 2 



346 



QUESTIONS 



What ought to regulate the 
measure of its severity ? 

Are crimes always punished in 
projDortion to their guilt ? 

In what proportion are they 
punished ? 

Example ? 

When ought not punishment to 
be employed ? 

What is said of counterfeiting ? 

Of breaches of trust ? 

Illustration ? 

Of the facility with which crimes 
are perpetrated '? 

Give the examples and illustra- 
tions. 

For what are we taught to look 
from the justice of God ? 

What question arises from this 
consideration ? 

How is the difi&culty solved ? 

First method of administering 
penal justice ? 

Second method ? 

Why is the second method pre- 
ferred 1 

What is said of capital offences 
by the law of England ? 

Of the charge of cruelty ? 

Of privately stealing from the 
person ? 

Of the prerogative of pardon ? 

Of the exercise of this power ? 

Of aggravations which should 
guide the magistrate 1 

Of crimes perpetrated by a mul- 
titude 1 



Of injuries effected by terror 
and violence ? 

Of estimating their malignancy ? 

Example ? 

Of injuries effected without 
force *? 

Of forgeries ? 

Of perjury ? 

Of obtaining money by secret 
threats ? 

To what is owing the frequency 
of capital executions ? 

Reason why capital punishments 
are less frequent in other coun- 
tries ? 

What is said of cautions and re- 
straints ? 

Examples ? 

What is said of great cities ? 

Of the third cause ? 

Of the end of punishment ? 

Of the first of these 1 

Of reforming punishments not 
yet tried 1 

Of aversion to labor ? 

Of torture ? 

Of barbarous spectacles of ago- 
ny ? 

Of infamous punishments in 
England ? 

Of the certainty of punishment ? 

Of harm done by scrupulousness 
of juries ? 

Of the first maxim which produ- 
ces injudicious acquittals '^ 

Of the other maxim ? 



CHAPTER X. 



OF RELIGIOUS ESTABLISHMENTS, AND OF TOLERATION. 



Is a religious establishment any 
part of Christianity 1 

Is any form of church govern- 
ment laid down in the Christian 
scriptures ? 

How is this reserve accounted 
for 1 First 1 

Secondly ? 

In what is the authority of a 
church establishment founded ? 

What three things does the no- 
tion of a religious establishment 
comprehend ? 



What is the first question on the 
subject ? 

What is said of Christianity as 
a historical religion 1 

Of the study and learning requi- 
site to an understanding of the 
sacred books ? 

Reply to the objection, " that a 
small proportion of the clergy 
augment the fund of sacred litera- 
ture ?" 

What is said of trusting to pos- 
sibilities for success 1 



QUESTIONS. 



847 



AVhat is said of the maintenance 
of the order ? 

What is said of voluntary con- 
tribution? llemtirks'? 

>Vhat is said of those who offici- 
ate in such congregations ? 

Suppose a legal provision expe- 
dient, what is the next question 1 

Where can this question not of- 
fer itself ] 

Where ought it not to arise ? 

Suppose contradictory opinions 
exist, what question 1 

On what other question does 
this depend ? 

What is said of patronage ] Ex- 
amples ? 

What is said of appointment be- 
ing left to the choice of parishion- 
ers '? 

What is said of appointment of 
ministers of religion by the state ? 

What is said of the plan in the 
states of North America ? 

AVhat is said of the inconvenien- 
ces of this arrangement ? 

Repeat the steps by which the 
argument proceeds. 

What is said of tests and creeds 1 

What follows from these objec- 
tions 1 

What is said of the division of a 
country into districts 1 

What is said of economical ques- 
tions ? 

What is said in favor of the sys- 
tem preferred in England 1 

What is said of the question 
concerning the treatment ot tliose 
who dissent from the established 
religion 1 



What is said of the right of the 
civil magistrate to interfere in 
matters of religion ? 

What is said of the laws when 
they interfere in religion ? 

What is said of the right of the 
magistrate to ordain, and of the 
subject to obey, in matters of reli- 
gion! 

Suppose we grant the right of 
the magistrate to interfere, what 
may be argued from this conces- 
sion 1 Example ? 

What does the author confess 1 
Repeat the terms of the proposition 

What is said of the phrase '' ge- 
neral tendency ?" Example. 

Two maxims which regulate the 
conclusions on this subject? 

What is said of the first of these 
positions ? 
What is said of the latter position. 

What inference foUoAvs from the 
first position 1 

What doubt presents itself? 

What is said of this question! 

Of toleration ? 

O^tlie expediency of toleration 1 

Oi die justice of toleration ? 

Of persecution? 

Of the toleration of books 1 

Of admission of dissenters to of- 
fices ?&c. 

Of two cases in which test laws 
are applied ? 

Of the second case of exclusion 1 

Examples. 

After all, what may be asked ! 

Examples 

First answer ! Second ! 

Result of the examination ? 



CHAPTER XI. 



OF POPULATION AND PROVISION ; AND OF AGRICULTURE AND COM- 
MERCE, AS SUBSERVIENT THERETO. 



Final view of all rational poli- 
tics ? 

What is said of the riches, glory, 
and strength of nations 1 

Of individuals, and of the hap- 
piness of a people ? 

Of the number of inhabitants 1 



AVhat follows from these prin- 
ciples ? 

What are points necessary to 
be established 1 

Why ! 

What is said of the fecundity of 
the human species ? 



QUESTIONS. 



Of the causes ■whicli confine or 
check the progress of this multi- 
plication ? 

Repeat the fundamental propo- 
sition on the subject of popula- 
tion ? 

1. First the proposition asserts 
ivhat ? 

2. Second requisite which the 
proposition states ? 

What is said of a yiew to the 
accustomed mode of life ? 

What is it vain to allege ? 

What form the point on which 
the state and progress of popula- 
tion depend ? 

Three causes which regulate 
this point ? 

1. What is said of the mode of 
living ? 

In China ? 

In Hindostan 1 

In Ireland ? 

Of luxury ? Example 1 

Of luxury with a view to popu- 
lation 1 

First conclusion from what has 
been observed 1 

Second conclusion '? 

Third conclusion ? 

2. Next thing to be considered 1 
On what does the quantity of 

provision depend 1 Example "? 
First resource of savage life 1 
Consequence ? 

The next step 1 Consequence ? 
The last improvement ? 
Consequence? 

What most powerfully effects 
Ihe state of population as govern- 
ed by the quantity of food 'I 
Example in England 1 
What does this consideration 
teach us ? 

The kind and quality of provi- 
sion, &c., being the same, on what 
will the quantity depend ? 

Greatest misery of a country ? 
Illustrate. 

What is said of the encourage- 
ment of husbandry ? 

Of what the laws can do ? 

Of occupier ? 

Of the violation of the above 



3. Of distribution 1 
Of the one principle of distribu- 
tion ? 

Of bounty ? 
Of equivalent ? 
Of property ? 
Of money ? 
Of hire 1 

Of production and distribution ? 
Of quantity, demand, and sale ? 
Of employment 1 
Of trade ? 

Of the effect of foreign com- 
merce ? 

Question concerning foreign 
commerce 1 

How is it answered 1 
Repeat and illustrate the next 
question , 

What way presents itself of re- 
moving the difficulty 1 
Consequences ? 
Ans. " The occupier," &c. 
Business of one half of mankind ? 
What is one portion of human 
labor ? 
The rest 1 

What is said of superfluous ar- 
ticles ? 

Examples ? 
Of tobacco, its use ? 
What may come to pass as to 
exchange 1 

How will the weaver dispose of 
his cloth 1 

Of what is this the principle 1 
Remark ? 

Where is the effect of trade on 
agriculture visible ? 
Illustrate . 

What is here to be remember- 
ed! 

Proposition 1 
What follows ? 

What scale may be constructed ? 
To what belongs the first place 
in this scale ? 
Examples ? 
The second 1 
Examples and remarks ? 
The last ? 

Why is this unfavorable 1 
Most beneficial branches of ma- 
I nufactory 1 
' Whv ? 



QUESTIONS. 



349 



What is said of the produce of 
the ground ? 

Of a perfect state of public 
economy ? 

Of extent of population ? 

Of the reasoning here employ- 
ed ? 

Examples ? 

Of the few principles estab- 
lished '? 

1. Of emigration ? 
Illustrations and remarks ? 

2. Of colonization ? 
Illustration and remarks ? 

3. Of money ? 
Illustrations and remarks ? 
Of money, secondly ? 
Illustrations and remarks ? 
Of the balance of trade ? 

4. Of taxation ? 

Of the sum distributed and that 
collected ? 

Examples ? 

Of the effect of taxes ? 

Remarks ? 

Of the tendency of taxes 1 

Examples ? 

Of the answer or apology ? 

Of the example ? 

Of the operation of new taxes, 
and the effect of long - established 
ones ? 

Of the instance just mentioned ? 

Of ultimate and permanent ef- 
fect ? 

Of a nation burdened with taxes'? 

How will a wise statesman con- 
trive his taxes ? 

To what opinion are we accus- 
tomed ? 

What is said of this opinion ? 



The point to be regarded ? 

Example > 

What cannot be attained by any 
single tax ? 

What distinctions may be fram- 
ed '? 

5. What is said of exportation 
of bread corn ? 

Of a maxim belonging to pro- 
ductions "? 

6. Of abridgment of labor ? 
Of its effect first, and more re- 
mote ? 

What may be observed on this 
principle, firstly ? 

In the second place \ 

Thirdly ? 

Illustrations and conclusion ? 

From the reasonings in this 
chapter, what judgment may be 
formed ? 

In what subjects is more wont 
to be expected from laws than laws 
can do ? 

What can and what can not laws 
do? 

Natural basis of trade ? 

What is said of forcing trade ? 

Chief advantage to be derived to 
population from law % 

Principal expedient for increas- 
ing the number of people 1 

Illustration ? 

What is said of conditions of te 
nure in England ? 

Secondly, of agriculture being 
discouraged ? 

Of tithes ? 

On what does the burden of the 
tax fall ? 



CHAPTER XII. 



OF WAR AND MILITARY ESTABLISHMENTS. 



Why has it been supposed un- 
lawful to bear arms 1 

Repeat the argument in justifi- 
cation of wars from Scripture .'' 

What difficulty in applying the 
principles of morality to the af- 
fairs of nations ? 

What is founded on this circum- 
stance ? 



Remarks and examples 1 

What is said of moral philoso- 
phy in this connexion 1 

Of treaties being binding only 
while convenient ? 

Of ascertaining duty } 

Of the law of nations .'' 

Ans. " In this code," &c 

Of these examples ? 



850 



^6 



QUESTIONS, 



Of tlie sovereignty of newl}> 
discovered countries 1 

Of a prince who should dispute 
this rul e 1 

How may war be considered ? 

Justifiable causes of war ? 

Objects of just war ? 

What is every just war 1 

The insufi&cient causes ? 

What is said of two lessons of 
rational policy r 

First lesson ? 

What is said of enlargement of 
territory by conquest ? 

Of what is gained thus ? 

First case in which extension 
may be advantageous 1 

Example ? 

The other case 1 

Examples ? 

The second rule of prudence ? 

Bemarks ? 

What is said of *' the dignity of 
his crown ?"&Ce 

Of the pursuit of honor ? 

Of the pursuit of interest ? 



Of the conduct of war 1 

Of the license of war 1 

Of the laws of war ? 

Examples 1 

Two limitations acknowledged 
by license of war 1 

What is said of a standing ar- 
my '? 

Of the institution of them 1 

From the superiority of stand- 
ing armies what follows 1 

Grive the reasons for preferring 
a standing army 1 

Another distinction between 
standing armies and militias 1 

Inquiry of great importance ? 

Answer ? 

Why should the army be sub- 
mitted to the direction of the 
prince 1 

What is said of obedience '? 

Of the danger from standing 
armies ? 

How diminished ? 

Whence should the officers be 
taken ? 



-j^ 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



